 Oh, it's action camera, and yet, oh, they wanted to remind people to speak into the mic, and to the mics when they're talking. When their operation is done by a small board. And it never gets old. What is this? It's a done by a use of help done. You didn't get to go to that. I knew, huh? Yeah. How you doing? I'm here. I haven't had a chance to speak to you. Happy New Year's Eve. I was not feeling the first part of the mic. I'm going to do another three years or not. Just fine. Happy New Year's Eve. Happy New Year's Eve. Happy New Year's Eve. I know. I'm really glad. We should have a little bit of beauty over here. Beauty over here. All of them. I've been wondering about that. OK. I hope you have a good time on this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Were you at the original? Were you at the? No, I was. That was October. Yeah. And I was. So was this well attended by our members? I'm proud of it. Yeah. Go on. I'm not sure that we get those. Yeah. I got them in email. So far out our internet service is kind of, you know, still if you're on that part of the county. So there you go. Yeah. I guess I didn't vote no on that. I'm not. I want to see. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Durham planning commission. Good to have you here this evening. The members of the Durham planning commission have been appointed by the city council and the county commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials. So you should know that the elected officials will have the final say on any of the issues before us this evening. If you wish to speak on an agenda item this evening, we encourage you to please come up and sign up on the board. So I'm going to do that. I'm just going to go to the left. You'll notice it'll have the look for the specific case number that you wish to speak on. You can put down your name, your address, and then let us know if you're speaking in favor or against the particular proposal. We will call you up when it is time to speak on that public hearing item. We'll ask you to come up and speak clearly into the microphone and give us your name, your address, and we will allow 10 minutes for each side those in speaking proposal that's in front of us this evening. Finally, all motions that you'll hear will be stated in the affirmative. So if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. And finally on tonight's meeting agenda, you'll see at the very end we have two items that are informational items only this evening. And so that means we'll be getting a presentation on that item tonight and the commissioners will have time to ask any questions or offer any comments, but those items will be coming back at a future meeting where there will be the opportunity for public input. So if those are items that interest you, we're glad you're here tonight to get the information with us, but we encourage you to then come back at a future meeting so you can offer your public comments. So thanks again for coming. May we have a roll call, please. Mr. Alturk. Here. Mr. Johnson. Absent. Mr. Baker. Absent. Mr. Brine. Here. Commissioner Satterfield is excused. Commissioner Satterfield is excused. Commissioner Baker is about 15 minutes late, he said. He'll be here. Commissioner Durkin. Here. Commissioner Hyman. Present. Chair Busby. Here. Commissioner Miller. Here. Commissioner Ketchin. Here. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Present. Commissioner Morgan. Here. Commissioner Gibbs. Here. And Commissioner Williams. Here. Can we have a motion to officially excuse Commissioner Satterfield? So moved. Second. Properly moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And we'll make sure we recognize Commissioner Baker when he arrives. Approval of the minutes and the consistency statements. This is from our November 13th, 2018 meeting. Commissioner Brown. Mr. Chairman, I have minor correction to the minutes. At our November meeting, Laura Woods presented the evaluation and assessment report and Scott Whiteman gave us an update and neither one of those staff members were listed under staff being present. That's noted. Thank you for those. Any other adjustments to the minutes or the consistency statements? I have a comment. I think it's already been somewhat corrected but I was going to suggest that Commissioner Durkin's name be, she deserves a place to her own but for the past couple of months she's been listed next to, she's been listed next to the chairman but I see. We'll pay attention to that, thank you. All right. We'll pay attention in the future and make sure we don't do that. If there aren't any other adjustments, we'll take a motion for approval. I'll move approval of the minutes and consistency statements as amended. Second. Moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. This is unanimously. Before we get to any adjustments to the agenda I did want to take a moment and welcome our newest commissioner, David Morgan and this is David's first meeting. So welcome aboard and David, as you know this was our December meeting. You actually showed up and it was canceled because of bad weather. So we already admire your commitment and we appreciate your rapid fire since our regular meeting will be on Tuesday but you're welcome to have the floor and make any welcoming remarks. Just wanted to say I was glad to be on the board and look forward to serving with y'all. All right. Thank you very much. Ms. Smith, any adjustments to tonight's agenda? Commissioner Busby noted the staff has no adjustments to the agenda. We would just like to add that all legal requirements have been carried out in accordance with state and local law for notifications and those affidavits are on file on the planning department. Great, thank you very much. Commissioner Bryan. I move adoption of the agenda as presented. Second. Motion and second, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Great, we will move forward. So again, tonight we have three zoning map changes and then we have our two information items and a reminder we will meet again on Tuesday which is our regular meeting. This is the meeting to make up for the December 11th meeting that was canceled because of the snow. So our first item is case Z18 00024. This is King's Daughters Inn and we will start with the staff report. And again, if you are interested in signing up to speak on any of these items, please do so. Thank you. Good evening. Emily Struthers with the Planning Department. I will be presenting case Z18 00024 King's Daughters Inn. The applicant is Colin Crossman. This 0.603 acre site is located at 204 North Buchanan Boulevard. This site is located within the limits. The applicant proposes to change the zoning from RU-5 and RUM to RUM. There is no development plan associated with this request. The property is designated medium density residential on the future land use map which is consistent with the zoning request. The proposed RUM zoning request allows for a wider range of permissible housing types and would allow a potential future multi-family residential conversion of the existing bed and breakfast. Sorry, I meant to show you that slide a minute ago. The site is shown in red located at the corner of North Buchanan Boulevard and Gloria Avenue and is located in the urban tier. But as one and two show the existing site conditions, the structure is currently used as a bed and breakfast. The site is designated local historic landmark and any improvements to the building will require a certificate of appropriateness. The site is adjacent to multi-family and single-family residential uses and Duke University is located to the west. The applicant proposes to change the RU-5 and RUM zoning to RUM. The property is designated medium density residential on the future land use map which is consistent with the rezoning request. And the dimensional standards are shown here. Maximum density without a development plan is 12 units per acre. Minimum lot width is 75 feet, the minimum street yard is five feet, side yard eight feet and rear yard set back 20 feet. The proposed RUM zoning designation complies with current medium density residential designation on the future land use map and applicable policies. It is consistent with policies 2.3.1A as the proposed RUM zoning is adjacent to existing RUM zoning. With respect to 2.3.2A existing infrastructure such as road, water and sewer capacity are sufficient to accommodate potential impacts. Further details provided in the zoning map change report. Staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you very much. So at this point, we will move to open the public hearing and we have two individuals who are signed up to speak in favor, we have Mr. Dan Jewel and against or requesting a continuance as it says here is Stacey Murphy. Each side will have 10 minutes. I'm guessing we're not gonna need that much. Mr. Chair, members of the commission, Dan Jewel. I'm going to let Ms. Murphy go first, make her request and just to let you know I am here on behalf of the applicant and we are in agreement with the request that she's about to make. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Stacey Murphy. I'll keep this brief. The Trinity Park Board has met. We've met a total of three times to discuss this issue. One in our December meeting in which some concerned neighbors came and brought it to our attention. Then we had a snowstorm. Then a smaller subcommittee met to go through the details. Then we had the holidays about us. And one thing that the board is certainly in agreement is that it is a complicated property to kind of get your head around all the different issues and covenants. There's some specific covenants on the deed of sale with that property that offer some protections. There's a historic landmark demarcation which offers certain protections or restrictions. And then there's the zoning changes which opens up and alleviates some kind of additional possibilities for the potential sale of this property. So it's a complicated issue. I think the board is getting understanding of it, but because it is such a complicated issue and we had the snowstorm and the holidays we feel like it would be better for everyone if there was a little bit more time for the neighborhood and immediate neighbors to get additional understanding and understand how all these three different kind of restrictive properties work together. And I feel confident that if a 30-day continuance was achieved that we could get that understanding and be at a better position. So. Great, thank you. Mr. Drew. Again, Dan Joule representing the applicants, the Crossmans. Yes, we are in agreement with a one cycle continuance of this for the neighbors to have a little more internal discussion. Also a question for the commission. We can make the restricted covenants available at the next meeting if you would like to see those, those among other things prevent the tearing down of the existing historic building and also would not allow any undergraduate housing in the building. So we can provide those if it would be helpful here to see those. I think it's always great to have more information and you can probably work with the staff and they can convey that information to us as appropriate. Happy to do that. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Is there anyone else who would like to speak at this evening's public hearing? This is the King's Daughter-in-Case. Before we move forward I would just want to check in with staff and I do want to clarify this is a little unique. As I said earlier, we are meeting again on Tuesday. So we are talking about continuing this until the February 12th meeting just so we're all on the same page. But. We were going to suggest you at least take it to that meeting and not to Tuesday. So I will show that. Do I need just to check on the procedures? So do we want to make sure we keep this public hearing open? You have to keep it open and you continue it until the date's certain which would be February 12th and I believe Mr. Miller had something he wanted to add. Yeah, Mr. Commissioner Miller. Before we vote or take any action on something it occurred to me while the Trinity Park folks were making their presentation. You mentioned historic preservation covenants which are not zoning matters. And I believe the owners of this property have granted covenants to preservation Durham and that being the case I thought it fair to disclose to all of you and to those of you who are concerned with this matter that I currently sit on the board of preservation Durham which is the organization which I believe has these covenants. I do not think that anything, any action that could be taken by the planning commission or ultimately the city council with regard to the zoning of this property would affect those covenants but I did think it and I don't think I'm required by the rules after consultation with staff to recuse myself because of this connection but I did think it was only fair out of an abundance of caution that I make this disclosure to you so that in time if it's necessary for me to comment you can measure those comments knowing that I'm connected with an organization that has a connection to or an interest in this property. Great, thank you, Commissioner Miller. Any other questions or comments? Commissioner Bryan. I was just gonna make a motion if you're ready. I believe we are. I move that we open the public hearing and continue the matter until the February 12th meeting of the commission. Second. Move by Commissioner Bryan, seconded by Commissioner Hornbuckle and we'll have a roll call vote. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Bryan. Yes. Commissioner Sadersfield. Commissioner Durkin. Yes. Commissioner Hyman. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Ketchin. Yes. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Yes. Commissioner Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Gibbs. Yes. And Commissioner Williams. Yes. Motion passes 11 to zero. Great, thank you very much and we appreciate everyone taking time to work this issue out and we'll see you on February 12th. I just want to make sure we recognize Commissioner Johnson. Good to have you here. We will move to our next item. This is Case Z1800026 Hale Street Duplex and we will start with the staff report. Good evening. Emily Strava is again with the Planning Department. I will now be presenting Case Z1800026 Hale Street Duplex. The applicant is Martin McFarling. This 0.345 acre site is located at 1020 Hale Street and is comprised of two locks. This site is located within the city limits. The applicant proposes to change the zoning from RU5 to RU5-2. There is no development plan associated with this request. The property is designated medium density residential on the future land use map which is consistent with the zoning request. The proposed RU5-2 allows for duplexes which would allow for an existing duplex in lot 139 to become conforming and for the construction of a new duplex lot on 141. The site is shown in red, located off of Hale Street within the old West Durham neighborhood protection overlay and in the urban tier. Photos one and two show the existing site conditions. Lot 139 has an existing duplex structure and lot 141 is currently vacant. The site is adjacent to single family and duplex residential uses. The applicant proposes to change the RU5 zoning to RU5-2. The property is designated medium density residential on the future land use map which is consistent with the rezoning request. Dimensional standards within the RU5-2 zoning are primarily determined by housing type as identified in UDO section 7.1. As the site falls within the old West Durham neighborhood protection overlay, it is subject to those requirements including the following dimensional standards. Maximum lot area, 12,000 square feet, minimum lot width, 50 feet. Maximum height, I'm sorry, maximum height, 26 feet. Maximum floor area ratio, 0.325. The proposed RU5-2 zoning designation complies with the current medium density residential designation on the future land use map and applicable policies. It is consistent with policy 2.31A as the proposed RU5-2 zoning is adjacent to existing RU5-2 zoning and existing duplex structures. With respect to 2.3.2A, existing infrastructure such as road, water, and sewer capacity are sufficient to accommodate potential impacts. Further details provided in the zoning map change report. Staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Reathers. We will move to open the public hearing and we have three individuals who've signed up to speak. Marty McFarling in favor and two opposed, Joe Arlinghouse and William Whitmore. So we will start with Mr. McFarling and each side will have 10 minutes total. Good evening, commissioner. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Marty McFarling. I resided 50-14 Renville Drive in Greensboro, North Carolina, though I did grow up in Durham and used to live at 1020 Hill Street one time before I moved to Greensboro. I think the proposal is pretty clear what I'm asking for. Currently, there is a duplex behind my property. My property currently has one duplex on one lot, which is non-conforming. That was done in 1959. The other lot has been vacant ever since that lot was surveyed in 1911. Never has been built on. It's wild. Having a 100-year-old lot in Old West Durham, never built on. Basically, there's three reasons that I'm coming to the city to do this or to the commissioners here and then the city. Number one is to correct the non-conforming status of the existing duplex sitting there. Of course, if that duplex were to burn more than 50%, Old West Durham's then lost the duplex in its housing stock. I can only rebuild with a single family without. I may be able to get a duplex redone, but from what I understand from the planning people, there's a lot involved with trying to do that and get variances and whatever else would have to be involved. The second purpose for this on the empty lot is to provide a senior-friendly housing unit that's a duplex for a caregiver and my 87-year-old father, who currently lives on Carver Street. The third purpose for this request is the highest and best use after owning this piece of property for over 30 years now is that the city will allow is an RU-5-2 zoning. RUM would be better in allowing me to put a nice-looking warplex up, which actually went to the trouble of getting some information put on and done for on the plat. But to do that, I would have to tear down the existing duplex and basically build the four-plex in the middle of the two locks, which is, you know, you're spinning your wheels doing that. Of course, everything with this, as I work on the development plan to actually get this done, is gonna have to now conform to the new NPO, there in Old West Durham, which will make things interesting, but I still see how it can be done. And that's basically it, so any questions? I'd like to save my last little bit of time for maybe a rebuttal, if that's possible. If there's any needed, okay. Thank you very much. And so Mr. Arlinghouse and Mr. Whitmore, you have a total of 10 minutes, if you would like to use that. Good evening. I'm Joe Arlinghouse. I live at 1019 Hale Street, which is directly across the street from the property in question. I am opposed to changing the zoning. I have some neighbors who have lived there for years. And the duplexes, especially the duplex across the street from me, the people are transients, they're there maybe a year or so, and then we get somebody else. So in terms of the aesthetics and the quality of life for me, since I'm looking from my living room directly at the property in question, and also in terms of building neighborhood community, it would be far better if we had consistently more single family residences occupied by the owners in the neighborhood. That's ideally what I would like to see. I think that would greatly enhance the quality of life. And I do worry about what might be built there because I've seen so many houses, many of which have been built by Jeff Moncine that are really quite huge and led us in the neighborhood to put together the NPO that was basically ratified by the city council. So we'll see what the city decides, but I think the single family residences occupied by owners is the best solution to our neighborhood. Thank you. Mr. Whitmore. Hi, I'm William Whitmore. I live at 2101 Inglewood Avenue, which is a property behind the property in question. And I'm sort of echoing what Joe Arlinghouse was saying is I think that the strength of our neighborhood is the mix between the duplexes and the single family, the housing. And at this point, we have a duplex on the lot next to that lot. There's one across. There's a house that's next to that that functions as a duplex. And then behind there, there are two other duplexes. So I would rather that the lot be developed the way the zoning is there. I mean, I have no objections developing the lot, splitting it and developing it, but I would rather it stay the way it was originally zoned and be a single family dwelling, which would fulfill your desires to increase the density there, but also keeps the neighborhood character the same. So thank you. Thank you. Mr. McFarling, you did have additional time if you did want to make any additional remarks. And then when we do close the public comment period, the commissioners may have direct questions and may ask each of you to come answer a very specific question. They may not, but just so you're ready. Thank you about eight minutes. Okay, great. I've owned that property since the mid-80s. I think you can tell by the picture that it's kept up pretty well. The house was built in the 20s. I've never really done any major work on the outside. I think I'm a good landlord. And so far as having affordable housing that right now let's see the one bedroom unit and that existing duplex rents for 800 a month. The two bedroom unit rents for 10, 50 a month. That's kind of below what's normal right now in Old West Durham. The fact that hopefully we'll be able to add a second duplex to the empty lot, which already has a duplex behind it. And then the gentleman Joe, Mr. Eringhouse, that spoke has a duplex right beside him that is across the lot or across the street from the existing duplex that I have on the lot. His house is across from the vacant lot. I'm trying to provide something here for my father and later in his life for his quality of life. And then once my father is no longer on this earth, there's gonna be a nice duplex dwelling unit there that I will probably live in till the day I die. By the way, dad's 87 granddad died at 99 grade granddad at 108, so I'm gonna probably be around for a while. So I need a place to live when I get older. But that's the main thing is having something like that available. And then as we can see, because it's the same way with everything else and that neighborhood properties get improved and it gives the housing stock something to continue the Old West Durham, or I guess so to speak. Yes, rental tenants are transient because most of the rental tenants that I deal with are MBA students at Duke University or young professionals and MBA students graduate and move on and young professionals start having babies and don't have enough room in a one or two bedroom duplex. So it is a little bit transient, but overall my goal as a landlord is try to keep a rental tenant there as long as possible. I've got one that just turned over on Carolina. It's gonna be empty for a month. I'd say $100 that's not coming in my pocket for a month. I don't like to have empty units. So in regards to basically being able to bring some more housing stock to Old West Durham, which desperately needs it, I provide that housing stock at a rather affordable rate since I was able to purchase those houses 30 years ago at a realistic price. You know, I feel very strongly in favor of this. I'm sorry that my two neighbors have some problems with it. I have spoke to other neighbors in the neighborhood and they do not have a problem with it whatsoever. So if there's any questions, I'll be happy to answer some. Thank you. Is there anyone else that'd like to speak on this item? I don't see anyone else. So we're gonna close the public hearing and any questions or comments from my fellow commissioners? Let's start, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you in part of my tardiness tonight. I have multiple questions, but I'll just ask one in hopes that my colleagues will hopefully raise the other one. So for the two gentlemen who are in opposition to the request here, would you mind one or both coming to the microphone? And I'm wondering or curious if you would respond to what are your thoughts on the future land use map, which has this entire neighborhood that's designated for medium density residential, given your concerns about the transient nature. And I'm assuming that if you're not a single, if you're not a homeowner, then you're assuming that's associated with more transient type behavior. But given that the future land use map has this as medium density residential as a zoning, as a designation, that to me seems that that would actually introduce more transient type residents of this neighborhood. So what are your thoughts on that? I think in the single family zoning part of that plan, is that, I'm sorry, isn't single family dwellings part of that plan? And I mean, like I said, I'm fine with a lot being split and another house being built there. I would just rather it be a single family house rather than a duplex, which is more likely to have someone buy it and live there for years and years, although it might actually be a rental that somebody lives there a couple of years and moves out. I mean, I like people coming and going in the neighborhood. I'm not, I just feel like that it wouldn't, that the neighborhood would be better is strong because we have a good mix between single family and over occupied and rentals and duplexes and that I would rather stay the way it's zone now, which is for single family rather than continuing to zone in more duplexes. I mean, I don't think that you get that many more people in there because you have a duplex, a duplex on either side, like to have three people in there and a family will have two adults and three kids or something like that. It's not like you're suddenly getting more people in there after you've developed a lot. If you don't develop a lot, then... All right, so quick follow up to those comments. And so based on my understanding, so the future land use map has this as medium density residential, which allows six to 12 dwelling units per acre. And so just with this proposal here, which is round 3.45, that calculates to around two to four dwelling units that could be on that single park, that parcel itself based on the future land use map. And so I'm just looking ahead, based on the comments that you two gentlemen made. And so in that case, you are basically like two to four people won't be home owners, single home owners own 3.45 acre lot. And so it seems to go against, it seems to contrast the opposition points that you made. So I'm just wondering if you're seeing this as a potential issue for your neighborhood based on the request tonight. And maybe I was... So if someone came up for... I guess I don't see my neighborhood being raised to increase the density there. I think that the housing stock that's there is gonna stay there for... That's an assumption. It's on my phone. So that's an assumption, but I could come into your neighborhood by a property for whatever reason and knock it down or it burns down or something happens. And I could come before the commission that whatever point in the future and use this future land use map as a way to go from a single family residential unit to a more dense use with my rebuild, with my redevelopment. And so I'm just wondering, have you two taken that reality into account? Yeah, but you would also have to come down and ask for a zoning change. And that's where we would discuss what was there and what was good for the neighborhood. So it would be a possibility, but... Kinda. That's helpful. I mean, it is a possibility, but it's not... You can't do it just because you want to do it. You're gonna have to go through this commission into the city council and the neighborhood association will be involved and everyone will talk about what's best for the neighborhood and what... That's fair. Okay, thank you. Great. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Alturk. Thank you, Chair. And actually, and just if I would ask if folks are having side conversations, it's a little hard to hear up here. You're welcome to go into the hall if it's gonna be a loud conversation. That would allow us to be able to hear the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. I'm generally supportive of this request. I think that having a duplex on this 0.172 acre lot, lot 141 makes a lot of sense. You know, the neighborhood, I mean, you talk about neighborhood character, I think right now, my guess is a lot of Old West Durham, maybe a majority or maybe not a majority of lots have duplexes, but a lot of them do, right? There are a lot of people who rent in the neighborhood and I'm not sure that that necessarily takes away from the character of the neighborhood. I think there are other things that give the neighborhood character. So to me, I think it's a reasonable request for one or two main reasons. One thing that we're gonna be discussing later today is that we have a shortage of housing for one bedroom units, right? For people who just need one bedroom, two bedrooms in the city. And so to me, anything that increases the density while taking into account the character of the neighborhood is a good thing. And so I think having a duplex here makes sense. The other thing is, I think that this is the kind of thing that is good, you know, the fact that we have an NPO here is a good thing. I think this is what we intended when we pass the NPO, something like this, right? To increase the density while still taking into consideration the character. And so one of the things that you mentioned or one of you mentioned, I can't remember, who is that you don't wanna see something that's massive, you know, a massive house, right? Because it wouldn't fit. Well, as I see it here, right? Lot 141 is 74, 94 square feet, is that about right? And because we now have an NPO that says you can only build up to .325% or 32.5% of the lot area, that translates to a maximum of a 2,400 square foot house duplex in this case. So I think that's a reasonable size home in Old West Durham. You know, it might be on the larger side, but that's the maximum, right? That someone can build on this lot. So to me, that's a reasonable size duplex. So again, I think increased density, reasonable increased density in this neighborhood makes sense and for that reason, I'm generally supportive of this request. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Bryan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to just simply say, put digital marks under what my fellow commissioner just said. I am also supportive of this particular request. I will add that one reason that can will correct a non-conforming use and as we're gonna hear later if some of the proposals, and I believe they're still, that may, I don't know whether they took down the boards that were out in the hall previously about extending housing types in Durham, but putting duplexes in various places where they haven't been allowed previously is something that's going to be proposed and had that already been in effect, this rezoning would be totally unnecessary because it would be allowed by right. And I also echo Mr. Altarch's comment, there is some protection added by the NPO, so some of the things that may have seemed out of hand before can't happen anymore. So that's all. Thank you. And gentlemen, you're welcome to sit down. We'll call you back up if there are any other questions for you. Commissioner Miller. So I have some questions for staff. So if I recall the NPO correctly, and I'm not saying that I necessarily do, it has a far limit of 32.5, but then without regard to lot size, there is a certain minimum square footage that would be allowed, even if a lot were smaller, say, than 7,500 square feet, is that correct? That is correct. So regardless of the calculated FAR, each parcel shall be allowed a minimum of 2,200 square feet of floor area, and no parcel shall exceed 3,600 square feet of floor area. So right, so those are the outside limits. The other thing I remember from our NPO discussions is that for Old West Durham generally, perhaps unlike some other single family neighborhoods, it actually conforms to the medium density residential requirement of the comprehensive land use plan in so far as the average density throughout the neighborhood is probably between somewhere between six and eight dwelling units per acre, is that correct? I am unable to confirm that. I will generally per Serri Young. Is that so? Is it my remembering? It seems to me I heard people saying seven or something, but I might be misremembering. Serri Young with the planning department, it's somewhere in there. I don't remember the exact number. But it's more than six. I believe so. Right. And of course, there's no guarantee that if this rezoning goes through that what will be built there will be affordable. Although I appreciate Mr. McFarling's indication that that's his intention. We can't vote based upon that expectation. I also am concerned about what may happen on this piece of property. If we change the zoning to RU-52, if the expanding housing choices proposals that are now out there pass, this property is essentially 99 feet wide, the two parcels together under the RU-52 minimum lot sizes in the proposal for expanding housing choices, what would be the minimum lot width? Can you answer that for RU-52? So the minimum lot width is guided by the Old West Durham Neighborhood Protection Overlay in this area, I believe? No, no, I'm talking about expanding housing choices. I would defer to Mike Stock on that one. I'm a little confused about how the MPO and expanding housing choices will work together if the expanding housing choices proposal passes as they are proposed. We will be proposing amendments to both MPOs that are on the books to make sure there's not conflicts between the changes that are being proposed for expanding housing choices and we'll be, we are meeting with it and those neighborhood associations this month. So what would, if what's currently proposed is passed for RU-52, what would be the minimum lot width? The proposal that I believe we're moving forward with would be a 35 foot wide, sorry, W, not L, wide lot width and a 3,500 square foot lot area. Right, so it would still be two lots. These two lots would continue to be two lots. You couldn't squeeze a third one in there. Probably not, unless you did a very small, there's a proposal, we'll get into it later. Flag lot at the back. Like a flag lot or a small house where you're limited even further by this, if you do a small lot, you're limited to the small house kind of thing. Under the current, a certain going back to the current zoning, if this were to go to RU-52, we'll strike that. Under the current zoning where this is RU-5, under the NPO that's been adopted, you can build ADU for each of these two properties. Correct, with a single family. No, no, if there's a duplex on it, you couldn't do an ADU. Even a non-conforming one? Correct, that's being proposed for change also. So that would be for the one lot, but if on the vacant lot, there's nothing about the way the property is currently configured that would prevent the applicant from building a single family home on the vacant lot. Correct, as far as we know, yes. And it could have an ADU. Correct. And how big could that ADU be? The measurement is 30% of the primary, 30% of the area of the primary structure. So we would have to work the calculus with the 22.5, and that comes out to essentially being a short third. There are some additional provisions. I'm sorry, I forgot, there are some additional provisions per the NPO that would supersede that, yeah. Yeah, the NPO allows you to go up. It's more than the... It's a little bit more permissive than, but it talks about accessory structures as a whole, not just accessory dwelling units. So instead of building a duplex on this piece of property, which would not allow an ADU, you could have a single family home and an ADU, and that ADU could be detached or attached. For current requirements, yes. Thank you, those are my questions to staff. So actually I oppose this rezoning. One is there's a lot up in the air for how things are gonna work in this neighborhood in the future, especially as it relates to the RU-52 zoning category. Right now, this neighborhood is divided between RU-5 and RU-52, the duplex zone. Most of the neighborhood is RU-5, some of it is RU-5-2. And so I would say it's fair to characterize the neighborhood, which I'm very familiar, as being mostly single family homes, but some of it definitely involve clusters of duplexes. It is my general feeling and general rule that zoning boundaries and residential areas should run along backwater lines and not down the centers of streets. In terms of compatibility and community building, I think it works better if we use backwater lines. And because of that, because this would change that, this would bring different zoning types across the street from each other, which I generally oppose. And because this neighborhood has a new NPO, which really hasn't, nobody knows how it's going to work, and now it may already have to be changed if we adopt the Expanding Hounds of Choices proposals, I would like to not rezone property in this neighborhood until we see how things are going to work out. Not only are we considering the most significant changes to the zoning code that have occurred since 2006 when we adopted the UDO, we are also considering now changes to the NPO, which we just adopted to make the NPO conform to the Expanding Housing Choices thing. So there's so much up in the air, I would like to leave the current zoning boundaries in this neighborhood alone. Noting that this property owner, Mr. Farling can still have two dwelling units on that vacant lot, and he would wind up with four dwelling units on the two lots in the current RU5 zone. He could have these existing non-conforming duplex, which is allowed there by law, and he could have a single family home and a sizable accessory dwelling unit either attached or detached from that home on the other lot. And that could keep his rental income flow going. It could provide housing for himself and for his aging father on into the future. That's my understanding, Mr. Farling tends to run with the land in this case. And so given that so much is up in the air and the neighborhood has been through so much in the last 15 months to two years over zoning considerations, I would like to leave the principal zoning boundaries in the neighborhood alone until everything gets settled and we see how things are functioning. To have one more aspect of dynamism going on in terms of the land use in the area and the regulatory environment seems to me an imposition on the neighborhood. And quite frankly, it's very hard for me to figure out what to expect and what zoning is about, especially for people who have invested in their homes, not only their money, but their lives. Reasonable expectations is what zoning is supposed to supply. And right now it's very hard to know what the expectations will be and what's reasonable and what's not reasonable. And I think these folks in this neighborhood deserve a break. So I'll be voting against this one. Thank you, Commissioner Miller, Commissioner Gibbs and then Commissioner Williams. I'm going to support this. I was afraid this was gonna come up since the NPO was instituted and I knew it would, but I didn't expect it so soon. There is a need right now with this property owner. And it's not going to be a skyscraper that's being built or a giant multi-story house. I think what is being proposed is reasonable. And I, well, I agree with a lot of the comments so far and even the comments prior to my speaking. There is something to it, but it's, if you wait for things to happen and all the bugs worked out with the NPO's and the proposed zoning changes and all of that, we all might be gone. And I know this, Mr. McFarling would like to get something done as soon as possible. And I don't think it's an unreasonable use of this particular lot in this area. There are more duplexes around. And as a homeboy, he used to live there and will continue to, I think he has the community at heart. Anyway, I'm going to support this and that's all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Williams. I would like, excuse me, technical difficulties. I would like to review the drawing that you brought in. I guess that's an elevation of the proposed property. Do you mind coming to the microphone just for folks at home? Thank you. This drawing was done as a speculative thing before I even went and talked to planning and zoning, thinking that possibly if I could get a footprint that would fit within the setbacks of that single vacant lot right now. And before the NPO got past the height limit, I think it was like 31 feet or something. But after talking to planning and zoning folks, and you all might help me here a little bit, something about the proposed land use in that area could only be a minimum four acres or something was mentioned. And I didn't really have enough land there to do a fourplex on the vacant lot. I would have had to tear the duplex down and put the fourplex right in the middle of the two lots. And so this is a piece of trash basically. Yeah. Yeah, does that answer your question? It does. And in reference to my statement of accomplishment, as far as Commissioner Miller has spoken, I definitely agree with you in terms of where we're going and how we go about achieving growth. And it's definitely more than one way to skin a cat. And if you can accomplish the same goal without minimizing it well, with minimizing the impact on the current neighborhood, its aesthetics and those around it, then I don't see why it can't be accomplished without saying it. No, you can't use the property, but we've had many cases before us previously where we have had issues with changing the zoning for a particular area within the same neighborhood and why that should or should not be allowed. And I don't think that we're harming density by creating a single family dwelling with an accessory dwelling behind it that could be used for its own purposes if not building on both lots and doing so if we're willing to demolish the existing to accomplish it, then we can do that and just start with the clean slate and still have two single family dwellings with two accessory dwelling units, give or take if the lot allows, but I definitely am voting against this. Thank you, Commissioner Williams. I will know Commissioner Baker has joined us. Good to have you here. Any other questions, comments or discussion from the commissioners on this particular item? Yeah, I had one question for Mr. McFarling. Just as a point of interest, you mentioned because of the concern about the transient nature in the neighborhood, do you do leases or month-to-months with these units themselves? No, sir, for the past 30 years, I start out with a minimum one-year lease. Normally, the leases automatically go to month-to-month after that. I allow the tenants to re-sign longer-term leases if they'd like to. Most of my tenants have stayed with the month-to-month version in most of them. I mean, I've had tenants for six, eight, nine years on a month-to-month lease after the first year ran out. So, no, I mean, like I said, I try to stay away from the transient rental type situation. I did used to do Section 8 rentals in that location, and that was one of the reasons I got out of it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Johnson. Dr. Phillips, I'm just curious among my colleagues in taking into account comments made by Commissioner Miller in particular. So, one of the goals that I generally speaking for Durham is to address the need for housing, affordable housing in particular, and we'll assume that this is a potential for affordable, more affordable housing. The notion of not granting this request but utilizing the existing zoning to still support more density with a single-family residency and then accessory dwelling to accomplish the goal of what the applicant says he desires to eventually move back in, have a place for his father and potentially him to move back but then have an opportunity to still have rental income by offering an accessory dwelling. And I understand there may be a cost, additional costs associated with that. But I'm just curious as does any of anyone of you have any thoughts on like, you're accomplishing the goals that have been stated while addressing some of the concerns that the opposition has stated? I'll be interested in hearing any feedback that you all have on. So, if anyone has any feedback to be recognized, Commissioner Miller. So, one of my concerns is, and this is borne out by the information the staff gave us at our meeting in November for years as the staff chart shows. And by fact, I have it with me. Anybody wants to be reminded our affordable housing in Durham is on the ground. What's built new is not affordable unless it's subsidized or got some charity behind it. Essentially what the market supplies is not affordable. And right now, at least with purchased units, ownership units, that differential span is between $350 as the average price for newly built units in 2017 versus $200,000 as the average price for preexisting units. I don't think there is any line that can be drawn between newly built or newly created density and affordability. I believe that's, it could happen, but it could happen without any changes to the zoning code. I don't think we can relax the zoning code into affordability. That's just not gonna happen. It never has and it won't ever. It's not the way the housing market works. Do we need units? Yes, but can we have units another way without affecting neighborhood character? My concern is, is I don't see it necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I believe that what zoning does best when it is applied best is it makes good places for people to live. I do not want to throw this aspect of what we can accomplish with zoning away in order to build any new units anywhere. And in this instance, I think containing the RU-5-2 district inside the Old West Durham neighborhood to its current boundaries is a better way to go in terms of preserving neighborhood character, which is what the NPO was all about and why we voted for it without necessarily sacrificing the ability to obtain density in this area. In accordance with the NPO, I remind you, only in Old West Durham can you have an ADU of 800 square feet. Everywhere else, it can not be bigger than 30% of the principal structure. Now, I suppose if you have a great big house in maybe an artin zone or something like that, you might get one bigger, but in Old West Durham, the average house size is much smaller. Here we could build an 800 square foot ADU. It could even be attached to the new single family home. It's essentially a duplex. And so why change the zoning? An upset, well-established and long-standing zoning and regulatory boundaries in this neighborhood and threaten its character. Because if we pass this one, then it becomes the basis for the next person who wants to rezone his property to RU-5-2. I want stable zoning boundaries. And I want neighbors, especially in residential areas. These are the people who, we don't zone with these people anymore. We zone to them, we zone over them. Their ability to participate in the process that we're doing now is extremely difficult. We have alienated them with complications. And I mean, this code, this whole code thing is so complicated. Those of us who work on it all the time as citizens have trouble with it. Let's leave this zoning boundary alone. If this property owner wants the income from two residential dwelling units on this vacant lot and the rental income that he enjoys from the two rental units in the existing duplex, he can have that without changing the zoning. I have always viewed a zone change as an extraordinary request by a citizen to change the rules that affect everybody in that citizen's favor. I think we should only do this when it's for the public good. And I don't necessarily see an overwhelming public good for changing the rules for the benefit of one property owner in this case. When the current rules allow that property owner to have essentially the things he says he wants to have and can have. So in this instance, we can provide for the opponents what they want while the applicant still gets what he wants. Everybody leaves with a full bag. Why change the zoning? I don't see a good strong reason for it. And I've also thrown out other reasons that concern me, especially for the Old West Durham area, which is an area that has been facing enormous development pressures. I would like to see things settled there for a little while and see how it works. We don't even know how the MPO works. I have some misgivings about some of the limits we set in the MPO. And I'm concerned if we adopt the Expanding Housing Choices proposals that we're going to talk some about tonight, that we will just have a mess, especially in Old West Durham. I think we need to take this into gestible bites. And this is not something that we must do as a matter of sound public policy. So therefore I'm against it. And I encourage my fellow commission members to vote against me. Mr. Johnson, any additional questions or comments? Well, I was hoping for some feedback from someone other than Mr. Miller. But if there are none, I guess I didn't get what I was hoping to get, but I have enough information to make a decision. If it's helpful, I hear the concerns of the residents. I'm inclined to vote for this. I think what I've heard from Commissioner Alturk and Commissioner Bryan resonate with me. And I believe that it is challenged. Well, I like the argument of it does make sense to get settled and I respect Commissioner Miller's perspective on this. I also do have concerns about how long it takes to get every train moving in this process. And so I also don't want us to slow down proposals that I think have merit. So I'm inclined to vote for tonight's proposal, even though I do understand the concerns that have been raised. Commissioner Bryan. If you're ready, I'll make a motion. I believe we're ready. Thank you. I move that we send case Z1800026 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation. I second that. Moved by Commissioner Bryan, seconded by Commissioner Miller before, I think we're good. Then we will have a roll call vote, please. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Baker. Abstain. Commissioner Bryan. Yes. I apologize, but just wanted to remind everyone, even though you don't vote and you're president, your vote would still count in the affirmative. We had that earlier with another case, just making sure. And just so folks understand, I think Commissioner Baker's intent is having arrived after the public hearing process, choosing to abstain since he wasn't here for the whole conversation is something that commissioners do, do over time. I'm sure that he's not abstaining. His vote still counts as a yes. Where are we on the roll call vote? Jerican. Yes. Commissioner Hyman. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Miller. No. Commissioner Ketchin. No. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Yes. Commissioner Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Gibbs. Yes. And Commissioner Williams. No. Motion passes nine to four. This motion passes nine to four. I want to thank you all for your time and a reminder. This will then move to the city council. We as commissioners write our comments down and those go to the council as well, but we certainly encourage you to make sure that you are able to come to the city council meeting where the final vote will take place and there'll be a public hearing at that time as well. So thank you all. We're gonna move to our final zoning map change item this evening and this is case Z1800020. This is Panther Creek and this is a change to a text commitment only. As we get the staff report, I do just want to remind commissioners to make sure you speak into your microphone. We've been told it's sometimes hard for folks to hear us during our deliberations. If your mic isn't working, then we wish you luck. Ms. Struthers. Good evening. Emily Struthers for the planning department. I will now be presenting case Z1800020 Panther Creek and these are revisions to text commitments. The applicant is Donald Sever. This 161.162 acre site is located at 2708 Burton Road. This site is in the city's jurisdiction. The city council previously approved a zoning map change and a development plan on August 7th, 2002 that's legacy case PO1-74. This request is to revise text commitments associated with that plan. The site is shown in red. Earlier phases of Panther Creek have been developed to the Northwest. The site is currently zoned plan development residential with a development plan, PDR 1.690 and located in the suburban tier. The development plan stipulated a maximum of 272 dwelling units and that was for the overall Panther Creek which extends to the North as well. The applicant is requesting some minor revisions to the text commitments. The first is to remove the 50 foot transitional use area. This TUA is no longer an ordinance requirement for PDRs. Additionally, the applicant proposes to remove notes 10 and 11 and modify note 12 related to Bragg Road and Manix Road. Connections to Bragg Road and Manix Road are not required to meet external access standards. To address connectivity resulting from revised notes, a text commitment has been added limiting the number of units to 90 units east of Ardsley Drive until the second access is provided in the area east of Ardsley Drive. No changes are being proposed to the rest of the approved development plan. For the unified development ordinance, any revisions to committed elements are considered a significant change and require a new hearing and recommendation from the planning commission prior to the case being considered by city council. The proposed changes as noted have been reviewed by staff and determined to be consistent with the UDO requirements. Staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you. So we will open the public hearing on this item. We have one individual signed up in favor, four individuals signed up against and we will allow 10 minutes per each side. We'll start with those in favor. So that's Don Sever. Mr. Chairman, commission members, my name is Don Sever. I'm with Summit Design and I wish everybody a Happy New Year. We do have two items that we wanted to address. One is through roadway connections with the original text amendment who was showing a connection to Bragg Road. And when we were looking at the project in more thorough evaluation, there's a significant environmental feature, a stream buffer that would be within this area. And we would like to eliminate that requirement to connect Bragg Road for that particular reason. And do you mind just speaking a little closer into the microphone? I think we're having a hard time hearing you. Is this any better? Yes, thank you. Thank you. What I was mentioning was with Bragg Road, there's a significant environmental feature that being a stream. And what we wanted to do is to eliminate the commitment to make this particular connection for environmental purposes on the east side of Manix Road. We would also prefer not to limit ourselves to connecting to Manix Road, but as staff had put in their particular recommendation that we would like to do a commitment that for a maximum number of units to 90 units, east of Ardsley Road, that we will make a second connection. But we just want to give us the flexibility to make this connection where we would best be able to deal with it with the adjacent property owners. If we make a connection to Manix Road, there is no existing right-of-way dedicated to connect from this property to the new property. So we're looking at just the possibility of moving it to a different location if we can find an adequate solution. The second issue that we are talking about is the 50-foot buffers that are along the perimeter. This particular parcel has roughly, well, the overall development is limited to a 24% maximum impervious area. And our preliminary plans are showing that as we fully develop all the lots in the roadway that the maximum impervious area that we're accounting for is roughly 16%. There's significant wetlands. There's a significant, a large number or large area for the 100-year floodplain that we have to avoid. With the main entrance coming off of Burton Road, the 50-foot transition buffer is limited on where we can put the lots in the roadway and stay out of the environmental features, that being the 100-foot stream buffer, as well as the 100-year floodplain. By eliminating or reducing the 50-foot buffer to what's required by the UDO, it'll just give us more flexibility to properly locate those lots along the frontage. There's also the concern that as we, this particular parcel is all downstream of the adjacent parcels being along Ardsley and along Manix. The original commitment was talking about a 50-foot undisturbed buffer. And what we would like to do is to get rid of that requirement so that we know that we're gonna have to deal with some off-site drainage issues, some storm drainage issues, and allowing us to come up with some flexibility of encroaching in that 50-foot area will allow us to properly address all the concerns for the future propagators. These were our major concerns and that addresses everything that I have at this particular time. Thank you very much. And as I mentioned, we have four individuals who are signed up to speak against and will give you a total of 10 minutes between the four of you, Paul Glenn, Edward Freeman, John Parish, and Christy Ferrell. So if you can come up to the microphone and again introduce yourself, give us your name and your address, and collect will be you have 10 minutes. And then ladies and gentlemen, I live at 2612 Burton Road. I'd like to talk to you about the schools to start with. I've called and contacted all of them. There's not one available space for a child. It's Glenn O'Grow, a charter school on Red Mill, and the one on Wake Forest Highway, which also has O'Grow, but this one's a little far that. I think it's a middle school. So they say there's not one place there. Next big problem is gonna be traffic. I live five tensile miles from Gear Street. Today when I left my house running 40 miles an hour, I meant 25 cars from there to gear. So, and if you build 90 houses in days, you have two houses per. The house beside me has four cars. Any of most people now have kids, you're gonna have cars too. So, better do want to let everybody know I did call the state. The state made me a letter, 12, three of 18. And this is not the 18 study. This is the 17 study. They don't do them every year. The 17 study, they said on Cheek Road was 4,400 cars. Turns off a Cheek on Gear Street. That's 5,000 cars. I'm not a beautiful mathematician, but that's 9,400 cars a day in 17, not 18. So this needs to be addressed for the study of kids, schools, and traffic. I thank you for your time. Thank you. So for the record, sir, you may have given us your name and I may have missed it. You're Mr. Green, is that correct? Oh, Glenn, I'm sorry. Mr. Glenn, yes, thank you. We have Edward Freeman next. Good evening, my name is Edward Freeman. I'm in pretty much agreement with Mr. Glenn. I've lived in this area for 45 years and I've seen some changes in the traffic, let alone what it's gonna do to the schools. I totally oppose any zone change in this area of that race and the traffic. Thank you. Thank you. John Parrish. Good afternoon, commissioners, or good night now, I guess it is. My name is John Parrish. I'm 2704 Burton Road. I'm adjacent to their property. I'd like to talk about the 50-foot buffer that they want to eliminate. I'd like to see that stay in place. Originally it's a 50-foot undisturbed buffer and let me give you a little bit of history on this. We've been working on this property and we have no problem with the people building the houses. They can go in there and build all the houses they want. But we went over this here in 2002. We've been working on this property since 1999. And now it's come back again to you guys to see if you'll move it to the city council to take a few of the benefits away. And with the amount of traffic that they're gonna have in here with this 272 houses, if it stays at 272, I'm thinking it's gonna be a little more than 272. I talked to the developer tonight. First time I got a chance to talk to him. And he's telling me he's gonna try to build maybe five houses to a acre, 8,000 square foot lots. And he does have a lot of wetlands in there and he's gotta put his houses somewhere and we do understand that. But we'd like to see some way for the automobiles to come out of that property besides coming to Burton Road and Archley Drive. We'd like to see some go back up to Redwood Road, which originally it was supposed to go to Bragg Road and Mannix Road, but now these guys say they can't do that because it's a creek up there. So I don't know what's changed from 2002 until today, but something has changed that they can't use those two roads anymore to go to Redwood Road. Now, Redwood Road has a direct access to I-85. So it's great access in and out. And that's the two things, I guess this concerns most people is the amount of traffic that's gonna be coming out. I'd like to remind you too on when it's real stormy weather that Burton Road floods at Panther Creek. I've walked in that Burton Road down that water up to my waist during one of the storms, but it does flood. Now I don't know if the developer needs to put in larger pipes under Burton Road, does he need to put in a bridge at Burton Road? He's gonna have to put in a turn lane for sure right there next to my property. He's gonna have to take part of my property but in a turn lane. And I have no problem with that. But long as they don't take too much of it. But he's definitely got some stuff to do, but I'd like to see something done about that water. And he spoke the truth. There's a lot of wetlands back in there and it's very few places that they can build. But they do need access to Redwood Road and they don't need to build 90 houses before they get access to a second outlet. They wanna build 90 houses and then get a second access out. I think they need to get that no more than 50 or 60, but I'd like for you guys to tell me what you think. He wants to build 90 houses and then look for an outlet. I'd like for the outlet to be pointed out before he starts doing anything. And then after he builds 50, 60 houses, have the road ready. Or a second access out to Redwood Road. He's told me that he needs this 50 foot buffer for drainage. Now I don't know how water can drain better on cleared land than it can on populated land where it's got trees and bushes on it. So I don't look like to me it would drain better if it has something in there to stop the flow such as trees and bushes and all. But you guys will have to tell me. And I guess that's about all I need to ask you tonight. Anyway, thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Parrish. Thank you, Mr. Miller come out and investigated this piece of property. I'd like to thank him for coming out. And I'd like to thank you commissioners for staying here, hearing us out tonight. Good to see you George. Thank you very much. Finally, we have Christie Farrell. Good evening, I'm Christie Farrell. I live at 2519 Arsley Drive and we are completely against this. Our road is already like a drag strip. So opening up Arsley Drive for an access to these homes isn't gonna promote so much more traffic. Like I said, when you got people, excuse me, when they had Redwood Road closed down for the bridge, everybody was cutting through Arsley. We've got a daughter, there's several families that are here that's got children that you can't even let them go out and play and ride their bikes or walk for safety because you've got people running 45, 50 miles an hour down our street. So like I said, we're against this because you open it up, that's more traffic, you got more homes, you've got more people, you've got more cars. And there's no way of slowing the traffic down. We've had the sheriff out there monitoring and we've spoke to police officers and the state trooper on our road and no one's done anything about it. We've tried to speed bumps. So opening it up and allowing these houses in and all this traffic coming through Arsley, Burton, being the only access that's just gonna promote a lot more traffic and safety issues for our children, for us, for the elderly community backing in and out of their driveway. So that's about all I have to say. Great, thank you, Ms. Farrell. Yes, you have about a minute and a half. That's plenty of time to haul it, y'all. Thank you very much. Yeah, they did a study in 2015 and right now, every year, Falls Lake is closed. I don't know if anybody knows that or not. And I've went there and skied for 20 years, I got two olds, but now, maybe I'll get my youth back, I hope, the long story short, they blame it on the ducks. And my year of skiing there for 20 years, it won't. But it did do a study in 2015, and they got a lot of grade of C for Panther Creek. High fecal level, what this is, I'm not a scientist, C-O-L-I-F-O-R-M, Oluform Bacterial Levels. So I'm sure it's not ducks up Panther Creek that feeds into that lake. So, but they are closing the swim area every year and they show it on TV if y'all have been there to see it. Thank you again. Y'all have a good evening. Thank you, sir. At this point, we're gonna close the public hearing. I'll look to the commissioners for any questions, comments, discussion, and we'll start on my left this time. Brian, do you want to give, sorry. Do you want to give the applicant some timers? Since he only took half a minute, I wasn't sure since we did that for the last case. He says he's good, so thank you though. That's always good. A commissioner, Hornbuckle? I just, for the developer, sir, I'm a retired sheriff's deputy and I've trolled that area for many years and as that gentleman stated, I've had to wade through water down there and that bottom near indoor lane down in there, putting up closure signs when it floods. That's a floodplain down in there. I just don't see any way possible that to, and wanting to remove the barrier there, the natural barrier there to make an entrance in there. If I was gonna develop that property, I definitely think I would find a way to do it off of Manix Road. I think it would be much more beneficial to the neighborhood, the Orsley Drive area, that whole section is the gentleman stated. It's a direct, Redwood Road goes directly to I-85. It would take a lot off of that neighborhood and Burton Road is. Burton Road, Gear Street, Sheik Road is very congested down in there now. Well, my main concern is I just do not see putting an entrance anywhere near that floodplain down in there. That's a disaster. To me, it's a disaster waiting to happen in there. Right. So we do ask that we have rules of decorum at the public hearings. So you can always just give a thumbs up if you appreciate the comments. There you go. Thank you, Commissioner Hornebuckle. Commissioner Miller. So I have several questions for the staff to make sure I understand. We have a development plan that was adopted in 2002, which is, and it shows lots, but I'm assuming the lots shown on this development plan are not committed because of the age of the development plan and that the rules were subsequently changed to require graphic presentations to be commitments. Is that correct? You are correct that the era of this development plan was illustrative. And so he could shift the lots around. But what doesn't change is the overall dwelling units per acre figure of 1.69. Correct. That stays the same. And the housing type is a commitment, single family detached dwellings. Correct. All right, good. I just wanted to make sure I understand. Help me understand connectivity rules here as they apply in the UDO running backwards to the 2002 development plan. Right now this property shows connections with, see if I get them all, Burton, Bragg, Ardsley, and those are the only adjoining rights of way. Do our connectivity rules in the UDO require them to connect to those places where public rights of way run up to and join their property? So right now I'm just looking at the development plan and I've got a little version of it so I'm not sure I'm seeing it exactly as I should. So Burton, I'm working from east to west. Burton, the property joins at Burton. The property joins at Bragg. There's a right of way I drove down there. That's a neighborhood and those lots run right on down, the pavement stops up maybe, I don't know, 200 feet short of the property line, but the right of way runs right down to the property. So for connectivity to adjacent stub outs. Right, exactly. Yes, so the environmental features can be determined at site plan that a connection is not required due to those existing conditions. Connections to Ardsley, our general development plan and would be required as the, I believe there's a stub out there. There's a stub out at Ardsley and she's saying that would be required. Yes. And then there is a stub at Bragg and that's required unless they're let off the hook at site plan because of an environmental feature. Correct, and so that's where this is coming in with the environmental feature. So we're cooking with this and then we come over to Manix and there's no stub out at Manix. Manix runs near the property, but unless they own say lot V or some other lot that connects with the stub they're creating, they don't have to connect there. That is correct. Except for the development plan, con and plates take connection in there somewhere according to how many units they build. Currently they're required to do things separate and apart from what the UDO expects. Correct. And it's relief from those requirements that they're now seeking. Yes, the previously approved development plan showed connections beyond what the ordinance requires. Right, and then there is a way over here. There is a connection that comes out and adjoins a piece of property to which there is no right of way. That's way over on the Eastern side. So what they're asking for today to currently under the current rules, they have promised, depending upon the number of the schedule of units that are built in certain areas to connect to, well here, you tell me, what is it that they're currently required to do? So under the current development plan or under the proposed? The current development plan. Under the current development plan, they are required to connect to, based off of the text commitments that are shown, that's what's required the Mannex as well as the, and then the Burton is shown on the development plan and Ardsley as well with that stub connection. So they're going to have a connection at Burton and then they build a certain number of units and then they have to connect to Bragg. So the proposed text commitment of the nine of Bragg? No, no, no, the current requirements is all I'm trying to say. Oh yes, the units or so. Because it doesn't actually name names, it just talks about connections often in an area. And I'm trying to make the named name, I'm trying to put names to the connections. Sure, are you referring to the text commitment proposed to be deleted, number 10? A maximum of 60 building permits will be issued. I'm not referring to any proposed text. Correct, it's proposed to be removed. It's existing text commitment, number 10. Okay. Maximum of 60 building permits will be issued in neighborhood C and B until a Bragg road or Mannex road connection is opened. Right. So, and then there's a certain number of more. Ultimately, if they build it according to what the current promise is, how many connections off the property will they eventually have at build out? Three, Burton, Mannex and Bragg. As well as Ardsley. Oh, all right. So is it four or is it, if they have Burton and Ardsley, do they have to have Bragg and Mannex or Bragg or Mannex? Oh, let's see. Bragg and Ardsley Drive will be extended to connect to the proposed roads in the site. So I'm reading it as both. All right, thank you. Now, but what they would like to have is just two connections. Correct. And that would, the two connections would be Burton and Ardsley. Yes, and that would be two connections up to 90 units. After 90 units, they would need an additional connection to the east of Ardsley. And that would be Bragg or Mannex. Oh, potentially. All right. Thank you. Those are my questions for, I think they are. I wrote a bunch down. Make sure I've covered them all. If I can, Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of comments. You may. One of my concerns here is that I drove all over the place out there. Mannex Road is not much of a road. I don't want to insult anybody who lives on Mannex Road, it's a narrow little road. And it's not meant to be a carrier of a lot of traffic. It's meant to serve the houses that are on it. Bragg is better, but not much. At least it's a bigger right of way. At least as I look at the map and experience, it looks like Mannex is a tiny right of way. Bragg, at least, is a full-size public street right of way, a 60-foot right of way. My biggest concern about, and I think it's important for us to note, this developer has the zoning he needs to build this project. He has rights connected with it and obligations connected with it. He must connect, he has the right to connect to burden. Whether we like it or not, he has the right to do it. He must connect to Ardsley under the code, and there's no way out of that. Because there's not a, I suppose, unless we argue that somehow the UDO provision with regard to environmental features having to do with Panther Creek might eliminate that. I don't know how that would work. My biggest concern is ultimately the way in and out of this project, as it is proposed, is requires everybody to ride along this little section. It's about six lots worth of this road running along Panther Creek. It's not named, but it would be an extension of Bragg. And if it floods down there, then everybody is trapped until we have these easterly connections. If we connect at Bragg, though, people can come out through Bragg and don't have to run down through that little road that runs right next to Panther Creek. We don't have a lot of options here. We cannot close off a right to a highway connection that the developer obtained when he got the property rezoned back in 2002. We can only deal with the request in front of us. I personally, if not satisfied with this, I think that the more connections that this environmentally impacted property has to allow people to find a way out of this that does not require them to connect at Burton or to run along that little section of road that inside the development that would connect to Ardsley to Burton is desirable. And so under the current requirements, which would be three or four connections that build out, which would include Bragg and include Manix, I think that, in my opinion, is better than doing away with that. I also am concerned about the 50-foot buffer. I would feel better about a, I might vote for something that adjusted the use of the property that's now designated transitional use area or this 50-foot buffer if they showed us exactly where, what parts of the buffer they wanted to use rather than just throw the whole thing out. And my reason for that is, even though we don't require it any longer, is that when this was rezoned in 2002, we created expectations for the neighboring property owners with regard to a buffer. So that's over and above just zoning ordinance requirements. These are reasonable expectations among the existing neighbors and new neighbors. And I don't wanna just throw those out and whole cloth. If there is some way we can use that land to, and we can show it on a new development plan, how it makes some other issue connected to this development of this property better, then let's talk about that specifically, but I don't wanna just throw out the whole thing. So I'm gonna be voting no here. I believe there should be as many connections in and out of this property as necessary to relieve the burden that must occur if the principal connections are artsy and burden and they flow down to a road that I believe will flood. I just don't, I believe that's the only way to do it. I believe there must be a connection at Burton. The code requires us to have a connection at Ardley and there's no way out of it. However, I wish you didn't have to do that. But ultimately, I think the current arrangement is better. I would, if the developer wanted to withdraw this and come up with something a little bit more specific about how we might use the 50 foot buffer area, especially down near this Burton tail of the property to make connectivity better, then I'd be interested in that. And if we could make that road down there, a better road for everybody, less prone to flooding, better for the creek, then I could see using the buffer area for that and reorganizing the lots down there. But without that specificity, I think this development plan is better the way it is than the way it's proposed. Thank you, Commissioner. We have Commissioner Johnson next and then Commissioner Baker. Thank you. Quick question to the applicant. I'm just curious as to the request to change the number of units that could be built before second access point, the 90 units. What's the basis of determining 90 units versus 100 or 40? That's in the UDO. It's a requirement for the UDO, it's 90 lots. Okay, so none of that. And am I correct in what I heard and what I'm reading is that in that scenario where a situation where you would build 90 units, the second access point is not identified at this particular point in time. That's correct. What we're looking for was the flexibility of putting it at an appropriate location because we, like I mentioned, on Manix, there's no right-of-way that goes there so we would have to deal with some adjacent property owners to buy them out or get a 50-foot right-of-way to make that connection. Or if you wanted to just say that we had to still do the same thing with Bragg Street, we would still have to negotiate to get the right-of-way. Or if those two options wouldn't work, we might have to do a third one to connect onto a adjacent property that would take a much longer distance. No, not connect into Manix Road, but to go a further distance to connect into another street. But we're just looking for the flexibility of saying, let us work it out in the details. We will make the commitment for that second connection. Thank you. And for staff, follow up. I'm just curious, student of history, what happened from 2002 until January 3rd, 2018 that led to the, what, I'm making a mistake, was at the time that the 2002 rezoning was approved, were the road connections that were required or was that above and beyond what was required at that point in time? My understanding is that the requirement at that time what was proposed was above and beyond the requirement at that time. Aren't you? So my final thoughts is that once again, Commissioner Miller and his verbose response made a lot of good points. One that was concerning was the removal of the buffer in that it set expectations for neighboring and adjacent neighbors and residents. And so just throwing that away kind of goes against the whole purpose of putting that in place in the first place. And secondly, without knowing where that second, where that in some time in the future additional access point kind of goes against the whole, but as someone in the development space, like certainty is like, there's a cost to uncertainty. And so I think that it just creates like some uncertainty, not just to the developer. I mean, what if someone doesn't want to sell that property or you can't get it? Like, are you just stuck at the 90 units and that may put your project, take it, you know, versus not only flip side, you have neighbors and residents who just don't know where an access point is gonna come. And maybe they don't like where you wanna put it and they have to deal with it or take it or leave it. And so that just doesn't, it could be, if we wanna make a change, I would want something much more suited up in regards to knowing what was coming with the changes. And so with that, I'm inclined to not support the request because I just think what's in place right now with the existing rezoning back in 2002 works better than what's being asked tonight. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Baker. I'd echo a lot of the comments of my colleagues, Mr. Miller and Commissioner Johnson. Some of their concerns are my concerns as well. I do want to say that I appreciate some of the comments that you made about trying to make an effort to conserve some open space, sort of your concerns about the environment. And that was one of the motivations for not wanting to have that extra connection. I certainly think that there are a lot of reasons why that would be in the public interest, but I also think that it's in the public interest to make sure that we have a connected street network of right-of-ways. And so I do think that that is something that's very important to be considering in this. And so I did want to clarify something and this is a question for staff. Were this to be approved? Connectivity would be reduced. The number of connections would be reduced under a full buildout of the neighborhood. So connectivity would still be required to meet ordnance standards of links and nodes for subdivisions. You're talking about the 1.2 connectivity index? I don't have that number memorized. Okay, okay. But the external access is what's being modified with that text commitment of the 90 units. So that's ingress and ingress as opposed to connectivity. Okay, but- Did that answer your question? I'm just curious, as it is now before the change, requires more connectivity than were this to be approved? To external access points, yes. Yes, okay. I can't support anything that would reduce connectivity. I think that's really important. We don't have enough connectivity in our neighborhoods. So again, I'd like to echo just some of the things that were described by Commissioner Johnson and Commissioner Miller. Thank you. Any other additional questions, comments, discussion? Commissioner Alturk? Thank you, Chair. Just a question to the applicant. Have you met with the neighbors about these changes? Prior to the meeting, we just met with one of the neighbors who spoke and we could go out another phone conversation with another individual who lives at the end of Archley Road, Mr. Bowie. Thank you. You know, I really appreciate the comments by Mr. Parrish, I think. Yes. I just thought that you brought up a lot of good points in it. Sounded to me like you weren't necessarily opposed and I don't think, you know, my assumption is other neighbors are not necessarily opposed to the development, but they want to see it done in a, in a way, again, that echoes some of the concerns that have been raised up here about access. You know, I think that there are a couple of things that could be modified here that would still make this development possible and that would appease some of the concerns of the neighbors, but I think as it stands now, I agree with my fellow commissioners that there's just these issues that make me hesitant to support it, but I think it's probably just a couple of things here and there that hopefully could move this forward. So I'm inclined to vote against it as well. Thank you. Seeing no additional questions, comments or discussion, emotion is appropriate at this time. I move, I move that we send the case Z1800020 to the city council with a favorable recommendation. Second. Moved by commissioner Alterk, seconded by commissioner Johnson. That is the appropriate motion to go to the city council. And so we'll have a roll call vote. Commissioner Alterk. No. Commissioner Johnson. No. Commissioner Baker. No. Commissioner Brian. No. Commissioner Durkin. No. Commissioner Hyman. No. Mayor Busby. No. Commissioner Miller. No. Commissioner Ketchin. No. Commissioner Hornebuckle. No. Commissioner Morgan. No. Commissioner Gibbs. No. and Commissioner Williams. No. Motion fails, 13 to zero. Thank you everyone. Again, a reminder, we are an advisory board only, so this will continue to the city council. They will see our comments. They will see our vote, but do stay engaged. They are the final determinant on this issue. So there will be a public comment period. There'll be discussion. There'll be a vote at city council. I hope you all stay engaged in this process, but thank you all for your time. So we will move on to our final two items. And again, just a reminder, these are information items only tonight. So there will be no public hearing on these items tonight. They will be back in front of us at a future meeting and there will be public comment period at that time. So our first item is Z1800030 and T180009. This is the Patterson Place Design District. And we'll start with the staff reports. Good evening. I'm Lisa Miller with the Planning Department. I'm here this evening to provide you with an informational presentation to provide some background on a pretty sizable project that will be coming forward to you scheduled for your February Planning Commission meeting for public hearing. So we're hoping to be able to give you some background on the project this evening, hear some of your questions and either address those this evening or make sure that those are addressed in our public hearing presentation and memo for your February meeting. So some of you may be familiar with this project. This is the Patterson Place Design District project. Just very briefly, I'm going to focus on the background kind of leading up to this project starting, then talk through the public input process for this project and then provide an overview of design district concepts. This is one of several design districts and future design districts as well. So kind of making sure you all have a good understanding of the framework we're using and then briefly touch on two kind of issue areas that are specific to Patterson Place and the presentation at the actual public hearing will go into much more detail about what the proposed changes are and how those are different from our existing design districts. So just quickly, the Patterson Place Design District project is to the objective of the project is to establish a form-based zoning district, which is what our design districts are, in the Patterson Place compact neighborhood. As most of you are aware, we've got various development tiers. The compact neighborhoods are those that are intended to transition to mixed use, walkable, higher density and intensity areas supported by transit. So there's two actions to put this project in place. The first is the text amendment to create the regulations that then would be applied through a zoning map change to the actual compact neighborhood tier. So for those of you, so as I mentioned, the compact neighborhood tier system was created with our 2005 Comprehensive Plan. The policies in the Comprehensive Plan talk about transitioning the zoning within those compact neighborhood tiers to design districts that are as a whole host of policies that support that. The first design district was established in the downtown development tier in 2010, which we established the framework that we use for other design districts at that time. And then we established another type of design district, which is the compact design district in the Night Street area that was adopted in 2012. We then, in early 2015, the planning department worked on a fairly extensive public process to revise the compact neighborhood tier boundaries. Since the time that the Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2005, there had been some changes, both in terms of future transit proposals and also envisioning the suburban transit areas that were previously designated. So there was a few changes that were part of that. One was transitioning suburban transit areas to compact neighborhood tiers that were along the proposed Durham Orange Light Rail transit line. We revised the compact neighborhood tier boundaries in some locations and designated the future land use within those compact neighborhood tiers as designed to indicate that they should become designed district-zoned. And then there were some minor changes to the Comprehensive Plan policies, including codifying the affordable housing resolution that had been adopted by our elected officials and some language around the intensity statements for the sub-districts. Those proposed changes were approved in June and August of 2016 by our elected officials. So in shortly following that, in October of 2016, we started work on this project, which had us in place at the compact neighborhood tier. There was the first where we decided to start working on implementation of our next design district. So our first meeting in October of 2016 was really a lot of the same content that I'll be talking about a little bit later in the presentation with kind of an overview of our design district framework. What are the different components that make up the design district and how does that impact what it's developed? Solicitation of feedback from the folks who showed up about applying that particular framework in the Patterson Place area and then noting what are some areas of concern specific to that particular compact neighborhood tier. We then in June of the next year, 2017, we kind of had a work session where we asked folks to help us draw out how to improve connectivity throughout the compact neighborhood tier, where some kind of defining sub districts for folks in terms of the intensities that they're sort of defined around and asking folks to help give input on where those might be drawn, getting feedback about appropriate height and density using a visual preference survey mechanisms and then talking through some environmental protections and kind of what was the most important aspects to protect. Following that in May of 2018, we proposed a variety of concepts for feedback. One were actual sub district boundaries, another were proposed heights and densities. We included the affordable housing bonus that's part of the draft now for feedback at that time, a couple of different environmental protections, a proposed future street network that includes additional roadway connections and some revised parking regulations that would help transition the area to a more multimodal friendly area. And then in October, this past October of 2018, we provided a presentation on the new design district type that we had come up with, which is we're calling the compact suburban design district, which is what is proposed in the text amendment and for application in the Patterson Place Compact Neighborhood Tier, kind of went through how the ordinance works, how design districts work, how the design district article of the ordinance works with the other aspects of the other articles of the ordinance and provided full text amendment language tied to sub district boundaries mapped out for feedback. So the compact suburban design districts, this is a new type of design district that is intended to be applied to compact neighborhood tiers where the existing context is more auto oriented. We have a handful of those, certainly the South Square and MLK compact neighborhood is one where we have that type of existing character that this would be appropriate for. So we're thinking about broader application of these standards when developing them. For the most part, it follows the existing design district framework. It has sub districts, prescribes appropriate building placement, height and density, minimums and maximums, has frontage and building types that kind of prescribe how the building interacts with the streetscape and the public space, kind of basic design standards and good urban design principles, as well as some standards for breaking up blocks into streets and alleys and pedestrian malls and providing streetscape monies. As I mentioned, it also includes an affordable housing bonus that I'll get into a little bit later, provides for a transitional use area and some increased steep slope protections to get at the environmental protection concerns and a decent amount of parking requirement modifications to try and work towards removing parking minimums to allow the market to kind of respond more as the area transitions to not have our requirements kind of keeping things more auto-oriented. So just briefly running through the design district concepts, the sub districts you see from the graphic here, we've got the core on the right, the little transit graphic there, if these are along the station areas, then the station would be in the core, then you have stepping down support one and support two and then the surrounding residential. So the core areas around the station, the support two areas intended to transition to adjacent, usually single family residential neighborhoods, and then the support one is kind of the rest of the area. So those sub districts have differences in terms of the minimum maximum heights, densities, and then in some cases, what permitted uses there are, particularly in the support two sub district, there are some more use restrictions. We have a build two zone and generally no other minimum yards that are prescribed. So making sure that the building is coming up to meet the street to shape the space that you're in as you're walking along the sidewalk or the street. The height parameters describe both a minimum and maximum podium height. So you'll see in the graphics here, there's sort of an initial building height and then it steps back and there's an additional height beyond that. That initial height is what we call the podium height. Then there's a requirement for a step back and then there's an overall height that you can reach after that. And then there are both minimum and maximum densities established, the minimum to try and ensure some residential to support the transit and then maximums to sort of make more predictable, though the maximum build out. As I mentioned, the frontage and building types really prescribe how the building interacts with the street itself. The frontage types are really just kind of the face of the building that meets the street and doesn't really address the sides in the rear of the building, whereas a building type, one of the example building types we have is a monumental building. So you think of something like the original courthouse building in downtown where there's more public space around it and it pulls back from the street. So there's a type that allows that kind of a setting. But in general, the frontage types prescribe a certain frequency of entrances, amount of windows to create more visibility and more activity along the street and ways to break up the overall mass of the building. And then there are some just sort of general design standards that are again intended to make the buildings as you walk along with more visually interesting to create more activity. And there are also some specific design requirements that apply to the monumental building type and then also quite a few that apply to structured parking to try and minimize the view of parked cars. Then the streets, so we have a future street network that is, the map is included in your packet and I've got a map here in a minute, showing as development occurs over time how we'd like to see greater connectivity of roadways. In addition to that, we've got adopted street sections in the ordinance that are looking to create more multimodal streets where people can walk and bike and drive and have buses all functioning together. We also have established maximum block lengths and sizes in the ordinance as subdivision occurs and a requirement to create new rights of way as again as subdivision occurs to create smaller blocks and greater connectivity. And then there's a handful of different kinds of streetscape amenities to make your walk along the sidewalk shaded with trees and lighting and benches and trash receptacles and things. So I mentioned there are two issues related to the compact suburban design district application in Patterson Place that I wanted to mention. I imagine we'll go into these in more detail again in the public hearing. So one of the things that we've incorporated into this is an affordable housing bonus. When we have applied design districts previously we have pretty significantly increased the densities and heights allowed in downtown. For instance, there are no maximum densities and the maximum height is 300 feet but you can add additional height to that to unlimited. So with this proposal, we are modestly raising by right densities and heights to what we have estimated to be the minimum density required to be transit supportive. Some of you may recall we were working with a consultant team called Gateway Planning that was working on a transit oriented development planning grant in partnership with GoTriangle and Orange County and Chapel Hill and the Triangle J Council of Governments. And that consultant team has done transit oriented development work all over the country. And their guidance was to ensure that the average density, minimum average density within a quarter mile of the station was 25 units per acre. It's definitely figuring out what a minimum transit supportive density is a little bit of a tricky question but that was kind of our best guesstimate. So we then would allow higher heights and densities that are not limited by a maximum density but only by building code and allowable building envelope if you use the affordable housing bonus, which is essentially adopting the interim strategy for this compact neighborhood, compact suburban neighborhood. So there are some potential implications of this approach that we want to mention that could include impacts on ridership of the future transit line, the impact on the mix of kind of residential and non-residential uses and then sort of how parking is managed in these areas are all gonna have an impact on whether the affordable housing bonus successfully helps us reach our transit supportive goals. So one of the things that we've noted is that the bonus needs to be used in combination with other strategies in order to make sure that we're retaining existing naturally occurring affordable units and creating new units by putting funding towards that or using value capture techniques in order to make sure that that happens because the bonus alone is not something that we anticipate will fix the problem. We also have committed to continuing to monitor the success of it in order to make sure that as we need to tweak how it's functioning that we can do that. So just a couple of notes. There's 11, almost 1200 multifamily and single family units that are currently in the compact neighborhood. There's no legally binding affordable units but of those units, there are naturally occurring affordability to family incomes between 60 and 80%. That's 844 of those units and 88 of those to below 60% of area median income. So there is a real possibility for trying to look at preservation of the existing naturally occurring affordable housing. There's also been some other strategies discussed as potential options moving forward to further assess including tax increment financing, special assessment districts that could provide funding for either creation or preservation of units or providing grant funds to those utilizing the bonus in order to help offset the cost of providing those at a less lower rent. The other issue that I wanted to briefly touch on is related to the environmental protections for the area. For those of you who are not familiar, the New Hope Creek corridor runs along the eastern side of the compact neighborhood tier boundary. There's been a plan for preservation of that corridor for decades in place. And there's a group of folks that have been working to help preserve that corridor for quite some time. So we've been working with folks trying to figure out what are some ways that the requirements can address some of the environmental protection concerns. The two things that we have in the current proposal, one is a transitional use area that applies. As you can see, there's a yellow dotted line. It's a little bit hard to make out on this map. That would be the transitional use area where any development within that area would require a major special use permit with a handful of findings that are specific to that particular major special use permit. It would include exemptions from existing development as long as the area of disturbance isn't increased. And the other thing that we're proposing are increased steep slope requirements. The current requirements define steep slopes as 25% or greater, which we would modify, we're modifying to 15. So 5,000 square foot contiguous area for it to be protected, which we're having to 2,500. There's currently a 15% disturbance area allowed, which we're removing. There are still some provisions for things like roadway connections that you're allowed to disturb for. And there's currently a 15% of the area that you're allowed to count towards your density credits where we're proposing that that be a full, whatever area is defined as steep slope can all count towards your density. So just very briefly, as I mentioned, the public hearing for this item is scheduled for your February meeting. We then will be presenting both to the city council and the county commissioners an informational item. And then to this project, we'll go both to the city council for public hearing on both the text amendment and the zoning map change and to the county commissioners for the text amendment, which we have tentatively scheduled or planned for April in order to kind of beat their budget cycle. I am happy to answer questions about this. And as I mentioned, we're happy to answer questions that we can or if there are things that we need to incorporate into the presentation at the public hearing, we can do that as well. Great, that is a lot of information. You spent a lot of time working on this. I know a lot of the planning department has. So thank you very much. And I think we'll just open it up to commissioners for questions or comments. So I'm sure we have some questions for you. Sure, great. Commissioners, commissioner Durkin. I just had a question about the enforceability of the federal housing bonus. If it was utilized, how do you then enforce that they're actually doing what the bonus would allow them to? Yeah, so that would require that I think we've talked about annual checks to ensure that there is compliance with that, which is not something that we have in place yet, but would have to establish along with that. Absolutely. Great, commissioner, Brian. Thank you. One thing that was mentioned in the memo that came to us prior to the December meeting on the bottom of page three about a report by T.J. Cogge that copies would be available at December. Yes. I would really like to be able to read that report. Is it possible to have copies brought to our meeting next Tuesday? Yeah, absolutely. So I actually, in anticipation of this question, I sent out an email with a link to the document for anybody that is up for reading it electronically, and then just let us know who wants copies so that we're not printing them if you're not gonna use a printed copy, but we're happy to provide those. Okay, and just a brief comment on the 200-foot transitional use area. Again, based on what I read in your memo, I would come down in favor of the 300-foot buffer, but I'll also be willing to allow some exemptions for small intrusions, but I would like to know what the square footage of that intrusion, what the maximum would be before I would agree to it. And also just to display my ignorance, is it likely that the property, just the land itself, that is inside this tier, will the value of that increase by virtue of being inside this tier? Well, so it's been inside the tier, and so there has definitely been some increased development interest in this area over the past handful of years. We would anticipate that as the late rail project continues to move forward in all of these areas near a station that there will be continued development interest and increased development interest, and would therefore probably have an impact on the value of property. Where I'm going with this is if the property gets more valuable and you build development on it, potentially your property tax increases, and if your property tax increases, then affordability might go down. So, yeah, so that's one of the ideas behind you using a synthetic TIF or some other value capture opportunity, which is the TOD planning grant that I mentioned earlier, a lot of that work was done to try and predict what the overall impact in potential value capture of increased tax revenue could be. So I think now that that study has concluded, there will be much more discussion about what we use that information to do in order to figure out how we can make sure that the increased property value that comes along with the transit investment can provide community benefits that are things like affordable housing in some places, perhaps addressing infrastructure needs and things like that. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Bryan. Before I recognize Commissioner Baker, I did just want to point out the TJ Cog report as the best title I've ever seen for what are 10 traditionally very dry reports. The footnote knows it's called raising the roof is the name of that report. It's definitely worth reading before our next meeting. Commissioner Baker. So I'm incredibly excited about this. I think that retrofitting suburbia is the challenge of our time. We have enormous challenges that we're facing as a society and as a city. We think about things like climate change and the cost of living, which is increasing for people all over this country. A lot of it has to do with the built environment and the way that we've been building our cities over the past 60 to 70 years is completely unsustainable. And so this is going absolutely in the right direction and we need to be doing more of it. And we're not gonna get it perfect on the first time. Of course, we know that. There's gonna be challenges and it's ugly going through and trying to take this built environment and completely change the way that people interact with their environment. We've got driving rates of 97% or something like that right now and trying to see how can we dramatically change that. So work like this, and this is great work, work like this is so unbelievably important for the future of Durham. I did wanna just mention two things, nothing that'll be surprising to staff, but when we think about affordable housing, we're not gonna solve affordable housing with a capital A with a TIF and we're not gonna solve it with inclusionary zoning. Of course, a lot of tools are not available to us in the state of North Carolina. But we really need to, as a city, we need to come together and put our money where our mouth is and we need to be able to spend money on true affordable housing, on true social housing. So that's gonna be really important looking forward. And the other thing is design because frankly, we're not getting design right in a lot of the higher density development that we're doing, even though it's mixed use and sometimes it's kind of nice. They're, I work across the country, we're seeing a lot of backlash to the types of kind of people called stack and pack. You know, this mixed use development that's going on in Chapel Hill and Durham and Charlotte and all over the country, people are kind of revolting against it. And so I think a lot of it is not necessarily density as much as it is character and design and just kind of the enormous scale that we're seeing. And so I would just keep those two things in mind as you continue to move forward is that we really need to invest in true affordable housing where people who need affordable housing must be living, which is around transit. And then we need to be thinking about, well, how do we make the built environment right? And you talked a lot about it. You talked about sort of the frontage and how does the pedestrian interact with the frontage of the buildings? And you know, I like to think everyone's a planner. If you plop someone down somewhere, they'll say, I'm comfortable here. They'll say, you know, on the side of 15501, they're like, I don't know, I'm not very comfortable here. And maybe they don't know all the different subtleties that make it a great place or don't make it a great place. You know, but I think that staff does. And so we need to make sure that we're doing design, right? Because we need to create places that people feel comfortable in. So I just want to applaud the work that you're doing and I'm excited about what comes. Great, thank you. Commissioner Miller? So as I understand it, we still are not going to require residential in this design district. So the way... We incentivize it, but we don't require it. Residential, not affordability. That's your question? Yes. So the current compact design standard requires that for a project over a certain size, I think it's 200,000 square feet, that you are required to include a residential component. What's the requirement? So that's based on the sub-district, the minimum. And the minimums range from nine to 21 in the support to up to the core. The issue that we were concerned about was the combination of that with the affordable housing bonus, is that if we're requiring residential in every project, as we're trying to make sure that any side effects of putting the affordable housing bonus in place don't negatively impact the character kind of directly around the station, where non-residential is generally more appropriate from a TOD planning perspective, people are more likely to walk further home than they are to get off the train and go to a job. So a lot of it came from trying to work through making sure that we are offsetting potential suppression of development intensity if people choose not to use the bonus. But I welcome your comments. And so did I read this correctly that in the S-2 sub-district we will allow single family and duplex housing? So that was something that we incorporated into the complex suburban design district that is- Yeah, that's for the CSD districts only. Yes. So that depending upon how the village goes, it might appear there as well. Yep, and what we were thinking is that as long that it essentially would be like a very flexible PDR that you have to meet that minimum nine units per acre and support to that it could be a way of creating some of the more creative housing types that people are kind of interested in doing that we're addressing some of in the expanding housing choices project and some of them were not. But it would allow a lot of flexibility and really just focus on making sure that the minimum density requirements are met and the open space is provided. But we don't have a frontage type or anything that would obtain or require for those developments. No, I believe that's correct. God, I don't see how you could apply any of the frontage types to single family dwellings. Right, yeah. Are we fixing the frontage types? Because I have major, my problem is is that an ordinary person ought to be able to look at the frontage types as illustrated in the zoning code and then look at a building and say that's the, and we can't do that. I can't do it, maybe you can, but I can't do it. And I don't think our design regulations are very effective. So I would, are the design, the frontage types for this gonna be the same frontage types that we that obtain in Ninth Street? Yeah, although very little of any development that has happened in Ninth Street was under this code. Some of it has. There, yeah, I think two projects. Two great big projects. I understand. And just as mysterious in their frontage types is the ones that are being built downtown. Yeah, one of the things that we have seen is that for, so both of those projects are residential and for residential projects people want to, they don't want to put a different use on the ground floor and they, so they want to pull the building back further than the build to zone requires. When you say people, you're referring to the developers. Yes, the folks that are, or the folks that are designing the projects, working with developers, that's the, so they tend to use the forecourt option which allows you to pull further back from the street. So with the compact suburban design district, because we're dealing with areas where there's already more room, like we don't have the same urban constraints that we have in a place like downtown or Ninth Street or Austin Avenue where there's more development in a very urban pattern already. Trying to take some of the things that we were more constrained on and allow some greater flexibility to hopefully address some of those things. I want to follow up on something that Mr. Baker said because I also am getting a little concerned about the, what I believe is the overuse of he called the stack and pack, I was calling it a Texas donut, but the five stories wood frame on two stories concrete podium residential. In the S1 sub-district, would I be able to build four stories wood frame construction on one or two stories concrete podium under this proposal? Not without using the affordable housing bonus. That was intentional. Good, that's what I thought I was reading. I just wasn't sure. What can I build without taking advantage of the bonus? I believe it's 45 feet of height in the S1. Let me just verify. Because that's currently the height limit in S2 in Ninth Street. Yeah, it's 45 in S1 and 35 in S2. All right, interesting. Again, this is part of trying to figure out how to make the affordable housing bonus. Attractive. Attractive, yeah. What about in the core? So the core, as I mentioned, that is the area where we are most interested in getting non-residential development. The core, as drawn in these sub-districts, is relatively constrained. And the buy-right. A smaller percentage of the whole. Yes, and the buy-right height in the core is 145 feet. Okay, I still think it's too big. Mainly because once we've done something core, we lose all control. Our hands are off. If we don't like what's happening, we can't fix it. I would rather to start with a plan that says, this is the core we're gonna start with. This could be core under the right circumstances and then invite developers to ask for rezoning to core and then we can look at their projects as we go. Rather than just to say, here's the core and throw it all in the ground at the beginning. I would start with a small core, identify part of the S1 as potential core in our planning document, but not make it law to begin with. That's just an idea. I would do the same thing with the S1. There is a section of this area that is, I guess, to the northeast or east that I think it should be S1. Right now we have that S1 box, I believe a little around to the east and to the north, if in fact I'm at, if I've got my north and south. Do you mean an expansion of a support two? A support two, I think this bulb here behind the Ford dealership should be S2 to begin with. I just, I do. And then my biggest concern, which has been the concern all along is concerning the fact that there is no pedestrian connectivity on the other side of 15501. I believe it should not be part of this design district. I mean, it could be something else, but it's never gonna communicate with, it's never going to, in my opinions, promote the principles of design districts because it's never going, there's nothing we can do to make it pedestrian attractive. On that note, I will mention because there was a lot of stuff to cover. I didn't mention the 15501 corridor study. We actually, the impetus for restudying that area came out at the beginning of this project and it really was trying to figure out what are options open to us that would be allowable through NCDOT to try and create better connectivity across that area. And we're continuing to work with the folks, staff and the consultant on that. And a lot of, there haven't necessarily been a lot of creative ideas about how changes to that corridor might take, might look, but there has been a lot of focus by staff, both planning staff and transportation staff at really focusing on the bike and pedestrian connectivity across 15501. And trying to incorporate that into a greater connected street. I think you could make it possible. I don't think you could make it attractive. I do not think you could make a pedestrian facility that a pedestrian is going to want to walk on. He may do it if he has to, not because he'll want to because you're gonna ask him to walk a long distance in a concrete environment that's just not very attractive. And it may actually be scary. We've already got one. But that's just me. I think this is a lot better than what we did a number of years ago at Ninth Street. I would still like for us to make the better. We're welcome your comments. If you have particular issues that you wanna see addressed, please, please feel free to pass those along. All right, well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Alturk. Thank you. Lisa, thanks. This is a great report. Thanks for the presentation. How popular are design districts across the country and how long have they been around? Form-based districts. So our design districts are kind of a hybrid form-based code which we don't completely remove use from the equation. We do kind of unify what uses are allowed in each of the sub districts pretty broadly. They've been around for a couple decades. Okay, so they've been around for a while and they're probably all over the country, right? So do we have, I mean, I guess I wanna follow up on Commissioner Brine and Commissioner Baker's comments about affordability. It seems to me like we're trying to, right, we wanna have these design districts, but we, and you've acknowledged that this might make things unaffordable or make. And so I guess I'm wondering, do we have something to base this on, right? Can we look at other cities that have implemented design districts, something similar to ours, and to see what the effect on affordability has been. Yeah, I think it's hard to pull. So there are a lot of factors that go into what is impacting affordability. And I think that it's hard to zero in just on putting zoning like this in place. And I think it's also tough because, so a transit investment is certainly something that's gonna impact affordability. But in order to make that transit investment successful, then we need to have intensity to create ridership and to support that. And in order to modify the transportation patterns in order to deal with congestion and the amount of growth that we're foreseeing. So the way that I would look at the design districts are, they're trying to create a better form for greater intensity. We have existing zoning districts that in order to accommodate more growth, we could increase the intensity. We would still have affordability issues, but we would not, the design district piece is really trying to look more at how you can, creating more mixed of uses and creating more intentional public spaces between developments. So I think, I mean, certainly I feel fairly certain that I could find some studies that have looked at affordability and form-based code. I'm not sure, I think there would be a lot of caveats to extrapolating that about whether or not it's a good idea to implement the design district, for instance. Sure, sure, and there's no doubt about that. I guess what struck me about part of this report on page four, you mentioned the number of naturally occurring affordable units in this. And that, this seemed to me a relatively high number. It's a good number, 80% fall within that range. But it's, I think we're bound to, that number is bound to go down if we have these, and again, you're right. I mean, it's not just because we have these design districts, other factors are contributing. I guess my concern is that we have, are proposing these design districts and saying, well, there's one, we're proposing one tool, which is the affordable housing density bonus, right? Or bonus, which you've acknowledged is probably not going to do much or has not in the past. Yeah, it's not gonna solve the problem. I guess, so then why implement a design district without knowing, I mean, without waiting on, or trying to address the affordable housing issue as well, simultaneously, because I mean, in the report, you say, well, some strategies that could address this in the future are X, Y, and Z. I don't know, I'm worried that we do something like this and then this area becomes unaffordable. So a lot of, excellent point and question, absolutely. And I think, so part of what we are trying to balance in our role is a whole host of outcomes that create a more livable city. Affordability is a big piece of that. Another very big piece of that is creating the intensity that we need to accommodate the growth that's occurring in places where they're concentrated and we can serve with transit, even if it's some other form of transit. And so it's important that we start to shape our built environment in a way that's going to be supportive of creating places that people don't have to drive everywhere. And that will have an impact on affordability in a positive sense. And so there's a lot of coordination that's been happening over the last couple of years with our department and the community development staff and working on affordable housing strategies in our department, working with water management and public works and looking at infrastructure. There are a whole host of things that are sort of in the works trying to work towards those goals in these places and this is one piece of that. So I'm not sure that that fully answers your question, but at least it gives you some of our thought process. No, and I guess we're getting this report right before we get the report on housing expansion, whatever it's called, housing. Yes, and I guess what, if I'm not mistaken, I didn't see anything in there that addressed, most of that was about kind of the urban tier and duplexes. And so I don't know, there was nothing in there about some of the suburb, I mean there was some about, some of the things would address some of the housing issues in the suburban tier and maybe in this particular sub districts or this design district, but I am worried about trying to go ahead with something that could have an effect on affordable housing before we address some of the affordable housing issues holistically. So that's why, I mean I guess that's why I started with the question about other cities and other, and I get it, it's hard to extrapolate, but I think going in with more information or fuller information would be better with something like this, this is a big change. So I will, I don't see anyone else looking to make comments. We'll get to Commissioner Bryan in a moment. I'll make my remarks as well. Is someone else looking to make comments? Go ahead. Okay, I'll just say a big picture. I really appreciate the work that went into this thing. It's very thoughtful. There's a lot of good things in here in particular. I like the decision to just modestly raise the buy rate. I think that's a smart approach. I hope it works. I know we've got to see it, but to make it enough to be transit supportive, I did wanna just agree with Commissioner Bryan with the concern on going from the 300 foot buffer to the 200 foot buffer. I don't think we're getting the balance right there that's needed from the environmental protections and the commitments that we've made for many decades. So I hope that's something we look to revisit. That's one of the big things that stands out to me as falling short of what I would like to see in this plan, but there's a lot of really good thought and really appreciate your presentation. So Commissioner Bryan, did you have- Let's look, Commissioner Gibbs hasn't had a chance yet. I'm sorry, Commissioner Gibbs. Well, I won't take it just a minute. And I agree with you just said. I can see where this whole project is going. This design district, Patterson Place. Do we call it a design district? That's fine, yeah. There are several types of design districts. This is one of them. This would be one of them. This is CSD. Suburban design district. Yes, you can also call it a CSD if you like acronyms. Yeah, and there are just an awful lot of things, details within this that I can't speak to because I have opinions and feelings and with all the other things that we've all been involved in that are piecemeal to what makes this whole thing up. I'm going to have to study this presentation and I do appreciate the effort that has gone into it. It ain't easy and I realize that and that's why I'm not going to make any comments plus or minus that there's still a lot of things in my head about addressing it but I am a big proponent of maintaining the environmental impact standards that are here. The rest of it is just going to be brick and mortar and how we're going to put it together, accept it or whatever. Anyway, I will end my comments there but I am going to use this as another Bible from the planning department. So thank you so much. You're welcome. That seems like a good place to wrap up this presentation. Yeah, we do have one final question and then we're going to move on to the final item tonight. Is the staff looking at any scenarios where we actually don't get my ground? So we have discussed on many occasions over the last couple of years whether it makes sense to continue moving forward with this as there's uncertainty on that project and one of the things as far as potential projects that we could be working on that are in a compact neighborhood, this is one that is very accessible by roadways and so we think that even if the current light rail project doesn't happen that this is a good place to create this type of development setting. We absolutely need to figure out a way to connect it to other places if that project doesn't happen but are confident that that can happen given it's the way that it's set in sort of. I agree with you with regard to Patterson Place but we actually have this string of pearls that right now are brightly shining from Chapel Hill to Durham and a little coin, a little dollar as we go towards Raleigh and I am beginning to wonder, I begin to think it may be prudent to start thinking about other growth patterns that are not based upon rail systems. It's based upon what I've been reading in the news. I do think we have an opportunity with the upcoming comprehensive plan work that we're gonna be doing to be thinking through not necessarily instead of but even and. Plan B. Yeah, and we will be working on that in a timeline where there should be a decision on federal funding for the project which will help us know how much of a plan B we need. Now I mean if we're committed to light rail we have to go ahead with what we're doing but I was just wondering, will we be ready if we don't get what we want? And Commissioner Bryan with the big finish. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very quick, first of all, I'll just note that I've got a number of little picky things that I'll just send to you and you can deal with them. But one thing I wanted to mention long time ago when we were doing what was called the 2020 plan where we were again looking at transit stations and stuff like that. A lot of attention was paid to what was gonna be within a half a mile of the station and what was gonna be within a quarter of a mile. And part of the reason for that, I think the half mile was really considered to be that's the maximum distance somebody would really wanna walk to catch the train if they had to do it every day going to and from work or something like that. So if you're trying to, you may wanna think is there any way to get housing within a half a mile of your station? So the work that was done in looking at the compact neighborhood tier boundaries used that half mile which is considered a 15 minute walk or 10 minute, I can't remember, 10 minute walk and the quarter mile is a five minute walk. So it's essentially that's where we started and then we looked at what's on the ground and what are where actual parcel boundaries and things. So that was definitely part of the consideration at that time. Thanks. Commissioner Auturk? Yeah, just a quick procedural question. Has V-PAC had a chance to comment on these proposals? I don't think we've had any comment on them. There's not a lot changing in terms of the bicycle. There are a lot of bicycle parking and bike lane provisions in the street sections that are in the existing ordinance. There's not much that's changing related to that. Okay. And not much in terms of pedestrian issues as well? No. Okay. All right, thanks. Thank you, Ms. Miller. We'll see you in February. Our final item is also information only. It's the expanding housing choice. Good evening. I'm Pat Young, director of the city county planning department. More importantly, I am a poor substitute for Hannah Jacobson, our senior planner who along with Michael Stock or I'll introduce in a moment is a key leader and manager of this important project, expanding housing choices. And I appreciate you all's time tonight in allowing us to give you a update. I think what I wanna emphasize more than anything else is based on commitments we've made to the council and to the administration. We wanna take this item forward to the council and to the board of commissioners by April or May. And so in order to do that, we wanna bring this back to you for action on February 12th. But our commitment to you and to the community is to work as hard as we have since May and June of 2018 to get comments, to get feedback, to get input, to answer your questions and to listen to any concerns that you may have about this initiative so that we can reflect those and what we bring forward on February 12th. So I wanna talk a little bit about what we've done today. We've had Mike and Hannah have led this project and our planning team, we've had over a dozen community meetings. We were at five Rock the Partic events last summer. We've met with the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transmit. We've met with the Interneighborhood Council. We're meeting on Monday night with the Watts-Hillendale Neighborhood Association of the Request. And we're meeting over the next several weeks with several other neighborhood associations who have met with us. So what we've done is we have a standing offer both that we try to push out through social media, conventional media and through our website that we will meet with any group at any time as long as we have availability of staff and we've met that commitment. We did also have two open houses here at the last week of November. You may have several of you attended and thank you. You may have also seen the posters that have remained up over the holiday season that provide all that information. And I think most importantly, and I say most importantly because we are able to track these metrics. We have all the information we're presenting to you and that was presented in the open houses online. And we've received well over many, many thousands of hits and we had 1,300 folks participate in our online survey over the summer. So I feel like we've made a very strong effort in our best attempt to get robust community engagement. And now that we are moving towards bringing this item forward, we really want to emphasize that over the next month or so. And you all are among our most important stakeholders. So if it's not tonight, please reach out to myself, Michael Stock or Scott Whiteman with any feedback you have. So one area, maybe the only one that I'm sure we can all agree on in this room is that a safe, affordable and attainable housing is the key characteristic of a community that is a healthy, diverse, vibrant and most importantly, inclusive. That allows a diversity of housing opportunities for folks at all incomes and folks at all stages in their life and to meet their choices and needs. And this project is focused on that because we, as you all are well aware, have... Mr. Young, I'm sorry to interrupt. We're actually not seeing the presentation on our screens. I don't know if that's something that we can make sure can happen. That would be helpful for us. Yeah, we're seeing you, but we're not seeing that. Oh boy. Now we're seeing that. Okay. Thank you. That's great. Yeah, our apologies, some technical difficulties and thanks. We do want you to have access. And this is available online, of course, but and we'll share this and some of the materials I'll refer to tonight with you all directly after this meeting. But the Durham success and what you're seeing in front of you now is just a summary of a recent accolades that Durham has received, top 10, top 20 lists. Durham's success at attracting businesses and people from all over the country and all over the world has paradoxically led to increased competition for a limited supply of housing. And people are forced to make very difficult choices, sometimes impossible choices. And when it comes to trying to keep up with that competition and either retain their housing or find housing in Durham. Many of you know or I've worked with Dr. Jim Johnson, who's a demographer at UNC Chapel Hill. He talks about what he calls the migration dividend. And what that refers to is he and his graduate students have done a lot of research on who's moving into Durham, from where they're moving into Durham, what his research has shown is that of as of 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, the average in migrant folk, the person who moved to Durham brings over $10,000 in annual income in the average Durham resident. And that's their 17 people a day, a prox on average, over 6,000, 3,000 people a year, moving to Durham and 6,000 people a year, moving to Durham. And that increased competition is the fundamental factor that demand for housing is the fundamental factor in this project, this expanding housing choices project, and so many of the items that you all see before you. But at the same time, this demand is increasing, we're seeing additional factors that are adding to the problems that are caused by the demand alone. More jobs have been added, 29,000 jobs since 2010 in Durham than at any time since the 1980s, and more households formed than housing units were created. I know that it looks and feels like a housing boom, a construction boom, but we are on track, and this could change this year, but we are on track through nine years of the decade to produce less new housing units than any decade since the 1980s in Durham. There's a number of reasons for that, we could spend a whole nother session on that, but we believe one of those reasons are our rules and requirements for housing, and that's why we're doing this project. So these factors together have increased competition, has led to an impact on price. And I think more significantly this shows the changes since 2013 that have gone up from about 160,000 for an average unit to almost 260,000. These, this phenomenon is focused primarily on our urban tier near town neighborhoods, neighborhoods that ring downtown and that are within about two miles of downtown. That is for the reasons that are probably evident to all of you, many of you live in these neighborhoods, access to jobs, access to amenities, access to transit, access to downtown entertainment options, grocery shopping, and all the other things that make life great. What you're seeing on the slide here is that the overall countywide increase in housing, existing housing prices from 2013 to 2018 was 44%, which is enormous, but is only slightly over the national average for urban areas. But in our in town neighborhoods, particularly those that have been historically communities of color, medium or lower income and have been stable neighborhoods like East Durham, those have been, you see the slide, over 300%. And there's other neighborhoods, Waltown is very similar. And then we're starting to see those types of increases even farther out in Northeast Central Durham, Southwest Central Durham, Braggtown and other areas. So what that refers to is the fact that there's incrementally higher demand from a lot of our new residents, but also existing residents to move in closer to downtown. That's something you all have seen and heard about and lived and experienced over the last, certainly since the recession ended in 2010. And I think there's a complex web of theories and the housing market, of course, is very complex, but we believe that there's a really important and pretty clear obvious phenomenon that's happening here. A lot of folks are moving to Durham, a lot of Durham residents are trying to move closer to downtown. If housing doesn't exist at the price point that they can afford, and at the housing type and location that they want, they will buy down the ladder. And what that means is they will look for opportunities in town neighborhoods that have been historically stable, historically communities of color and historically low and moderate income and start the process of neighborhood change or gentrification. I think each of you has probably had a lived experience that alludes to that fact. Someone who may want to live in Montelondale, Alternative Park, can't quite afford it. They go over to Cleveland Holloway and buy Old Victorian Mansion for $200,000. That's now worth $600,000. That's just an example. That's happening 17 people a day, every day, for the past six years and for the past 25 years, that's what the state demographers predicting. So that's 160,000 new people over the next, through 2045, so it's 26 years. That's about 60,000 housing units that our community's gonna have to produce. Really, that's a phenomenon that we have very little control over. That's what the market is demanding. We can try to push those to Western Wake or Alamance or Granville, but we believe in order to be an inclusive community, we need to accommodate those 60,000 new housing units. We believe that it's important that a higher share of those be in the neighborhoods where the greatest demand is clearly evident and that was shown by those housing price increases since 2013. So what I wanna emphasize here is that increasing housing supply alone will not substantially help and certainly not solve the housing affordability crisis in Durham. I can't emphasize that enough, but another thing I wanna emphasize and I want you to please remember and question me or research it on your own or let's have a dialogue about it is, we will never be able to significantly improve the housing affordability crisis without increasing supply. It's a critical component of the solution along with additional subsidized grant programs and loan programs and other tools that help capital A permanently affordable housing along with a whole suite of other community interventions that will help this issue. One of those pieces is allowing supply increase where the market is demanding it and where housing prices are reflecting the fact that there's a significant mismatch between supply and demand. Another key point I wanna make in this regard and Commissioner Baker alluded to this and his comments. It is critical that we pair affordable housing opportunities with access to public transit. And I think getting that housing as close as possible to our light rail plan light rail system is critical but something I think we've all observed even though the light rail is many years off if it indeed happens at all as Commissioner Miller alluded to we're at some risk of that in the case. Much of the housing that's near these transit areas is going to be extremely, extremely expensive and it's going to be likely to be developed as you've seen now by large corporations that are financed by Wall Street or real estate investment trusts or other large investment entities. What we are focusing on in this initiative is allowing a small scale, gentle, context sensitive, context appropriate development that will not degrade, diminish or destroy that outstanding quality of life we have in existing in town neighborhoods that will allow significantly more opportunities for folks to have affordable by design housing and that's what you hear you've heard the term missing middle used a lot. We are not proposing triplexes, fourplexes or small garden apartments with this initiative. We will investigate and evaluate that with the comprehensive plan. We were looking at duplexes and accessory dwelling units and you'll hear much more detail from Mike Stock about that but what we think is that these types of housing opportunities unlike the large, I'm trying to remember the terms that Mr. Baker and Mr. Baker and Mr. Miller put on it but the five story on a podium. That's not- It's probably better that you don't use those terms. I really try my best to strict my vocabulary of disparaging terms for any development. It is the risk of not offending anybody because somebody lives in all of those things. But what this will, we think will encourage is development that can be funded by neighbors that existing homeowners can redevelop an age in place. Someone who's in their 40s or 50s who kids go to college can build at an accessory dwelling unit or build a duplex and rent out one side an age in place and have a screen of income to do that. Essentially what it amounts to is locally financed, locally sourced community redevelopment. With a lot of communities are looking at this as a key part of the solution. You may have heard Minneapolis, Minnesota, passed a comprehensive plan that allows this throughout the city. We're looking primarily in the urban tier. The state of Oregon is passing, there's been an bill introduced in the legislature that would require communities to allow quadplexes anywhere single families allowed. We're not going there. I think we think that there's a nationwide trend that's seeing that this type of housing opportunity is critical. Most of the in town neighborhoods that were developed part of World War II, you see a lot of this housing type there. And I think the vast majority of neighbors in those communities feel like it fits in context. What we're looking at doing is trying to reestablish that but making sure we don't damage or degrade or destroy the existing quality of these neighborhoods. So in summary, before I turn over to Michael to talk about some of the detailed concepts, we want to vary the menu of housing types that are available, trying to get away from just single family or large multiplexes. We want to stabilize housing prices. As I tried to say earlier, we don't think this project will result in significant reductions in housing prices. What it will do is we'll allow our housing units to keep pace with population and job growth and create in the process, create more opportunities for folks to stay in their neighborhoods and to live in Durham. You're gonna hear a lot more about this from Michael but in addition to that buying down the ladder effect I talked about, a lot of our mission-based and nonprofit builders like Habitat for Humanity and CASA already have lots of lots in town, in the urban tier and with this proposal using the affordable housing density bonus can go from one unit to say two duplexes. And that cumulatively will have a significant impact we believe on affordability. As I've tried to stress a couple of times here, nothing we're proposing here in our estimation and we want your feedback would destroy or degrade the character of these existing neighborhoods that are beautiful. They're the gyms of Durham and what we wanna do is enhance them and allow them to be more accessible for more people over time and allow folks that are in these neighborhoods to stay in place and have opportunities to do locally source redevelopment. And have this kind of small scale creative infill that I've talked about and finally, we wanna make sure that this can be done by right through the rules that are passed through this process. The, especially for small developers, as you all have heard from many applicants standing at this podium, the rezoning process of the use permit process imposes a significant cost that is often not able to be born for somebody who's trying to build an ADU in their backyard or build from a single family unit to a duplex. So I'm gonna turn it over to Michael to talk a little bit more about the menu of zoning proposal changes and we'll be happy to take any questions you all have. Thank you. Thank you, Michael Soth, the planning department. It's tough to follow that and who knows? We'll see if I do the job adequately enough. But what I just wanna kind of briefly go over with you and again, these are all items that were discussed at a more concept level throughout the summer and into the fall and presentations to the elected officials and then even provided in more detail through the open house at the same presentation and the posters and what's online. We're not discussing anything that's brand new. There are just a number of, and if you've looked at the presentation already or looked online, there are some just general topics that we're looking to modify or add to. The first one are the infill standards as Pat alluded to. Contact sensitive development is still important and the infill standards are standards that currently exist within the UDO. We're not, what we're looking to do is modify them to in some cases make them clear or make the rules more meaningful and enforceable. And also we will need to modify them to make sure that they do not conflict with other provisions that we're proposing, such as the smaller lot area or actually specifically lot width requirements. These infill standards are primarily applicable within the urban tier for residential development. And they act as almost like an overlay for all residential development that's under four acres in size. So we wanna make sure that they do not create a chain issues that create some of the changes that might be moved. We also are looking to use them as ways to address some of the impacts that additional built environment could have, such as tree canopy and such and making the landscaping section a little bit more meaningful, borrowing from some of the standards developed for the old Western neighborhood. NPO, accessory dwelling units. We've allowed them by right since 2006 when the UDO was adopted prior to that, they were required as a special use permit. They still are not a prevalent development type of dwelling unit throughout Durham. Since 2006, I believe we took a look at it around 70 or 80. So accessory dwelling units have been done. There's a lot of factors for that. There's very little financing options for those right now. And that's something that we are actually working with to address in conjunction with this with community development department. But also we are taking a look at the regulations to make sure that we have regulations that can open up more opportunities for accessory dwelling units, taking a look at some of the limitations on the lots, streamlining the size requirements to just a flat square footage requirement. So you're not having to figure out your size of your house and compare it to what size ADU you can have. And also looking to expand a little bit of location where they can go on the lot to allow more flexibility. And also possibly expand them to duplex lots too. Start introducing an ADU on a lot that already has duplex. Currently, they're allowed on any lot that allows a single family unit. So single family housing or even townhouses can have an ADU as part of it too. Duplexes, quite frankly, we are looking to expand duplex allowance by right throughout the residential districts in the urban tier. And also expand their possibilities when you do a kind of specialized cluster subdivisions and conservation subdivisions in the suburban tier, which they become more prevalent. And those are trade-offs where if you're familiar with those, those are by right types of subdivisions where you get a trade-off on smaller lot sizes or even an increased intensity with conservation subdivisions with providing more open space or protected areas. We actually heard that from council when there was one conservation subdivision rezoning or tied to an existing conservation and questioning why they needed the rezoning when they're tying into a development that quite frankly can only allow single family and they wanted to do townhouses. So duplexes, townhouses for conservation subdivisions. But we are looking to expand duplexes and start treating the theme throughout a number of these changes will be starting to treat duplexes, two unit dwelling units the same as a single family dwelling unit. Making them, not making a duplex stand out more than what a single family house would be developed like treating the development standards the same. A lot dimensions and density, as we've alluded, not alluded to but discussed quite specifically trying to increase density within some of these in town neighborhoods and thus adjusting the lot sizes accordingly for by right. And we've taken a look at the numbers that are currently on the books for rezoning districts and use those as a basis for the changes. And as you've seen and hopefully you've seen in the documents and through the open houses, you've seen the least what we're proposing at this time to adjust them kind of down by one step. And then the density changes are really to align the lot dimensional standards with the maximum densities allowed with those zoning districts and also taking a look at the future land use map and making sure those density maximums do not conflict with those future land use map. Descunations. And then finally, although there was one slide with this, another actually a new kind of housing type that is being proposed is a small house on small lot. And there's a couple of things that are with this. We heard a lot of comments or interest in allowing people to do, there's no minimum. The zoning does not require a minimum house size. And there's been lots of interest in smaller houses. We're not talking about tiny houses that we see on HGTV that are on wheels and can be pulled all over the place. But we're talking about just smaller houses and that there's not a need for a larger lot for a smaller house. So we have introduced a housing type that allows for a smaller lot size. Probably around what we've proposed so far is around 2000 square feet and it's a 25 foot lot width. But in trade, you are capped at the size of the house that you can put on that lot. And. Which is. Oh, 1200 square feet with an 800 square foot footprint. At least what the numbers are on proposed right now. A second part of that is a smaller flag lot option where you could reduce the flag lot if you are, well, if I could best describe a flag lot is a lot that looks like a flag. And it has a pole, which is a very small piece of land that fronts along the street and extends back. And then there's a buildable area usually behind an existing lot. So the flag is the part is the buildable lot area and the pole usually functions as the access drive primarily. They're allowed by right now. But they have to be, the poles have to be at least 20 feet wide. And we're looking to reduce those pole widths to 12 feet to enter, to allow more flag lot possibilities. But again, you would be limited to the lot, to the size of the house. And it actually functions as a home owner, property ownership opportunity that's very similar in design or scale to an ADU. So you would, you can have an ADU to the rear of your house or you might have a smaller house on a separate lot on a flag lot to the rear of your house. So that's an option we're also proposing. Other things that we, another option that we've mentioned briefly is the cottage court or sometimes they're called pocket neighborhoods. Other jurisdictions are starting to develop these and these require open space and the development of housing units around a common open space. I don't know if we'll be moving forward specifically with those at this time because of the need to set aside land just for open space. We're not quite sure these are appropriate for a particular urban tier setting, but they would definitely will be explored through the comp plan and such. There are other additional changes that we've noted in the posters and online that I'll be glad to answer for you. I just wanted to give you the timeline. Pat discussed the timeline that we're working with. We are in the kind of the second public engagement process fall 2018 and now we're also kind of but blending more into the developing the proposed draft. We're gonna take a look at the comments and the feedback we received from the online survey. We'll provide that to you at the public hearing for your information. And then once you've made your recommendation we'll obviously schedule it for the elected bodies and we're shooting for April or May at the latest. And there you are. Glad to answer any questions for you. Thank you, Mr. Stock and Mr. Young. Really appreciate the thorough presentation. Commissioners, questions or comments? Start to my right, Commissioner Bryan. For all start with a trick question. In the documentation that you presented with respect to duplexes, you asked people if they could recognize a duplex and you gave four things to pick from. 82% of the people you asked got it wrong. Your next question was whether or not people would be comfortable having a duplex in their neighborhood. I think 60 some percent were comfortable and another 27% were fairly come something like that. And it's sort of generated a question in my mind if people can't recognize a duplex when they see it, how are they gonna know if they're gonna be comfortable with it in their neighborhood? Especially. Well, that's the whole point is that a lot of folks are concerned about the design and aesthetics and how duplexes stand out in the neighborhood. And it just points to the fact that people generally, unless they can really study the house and see two specific doors with mailboxes that they're gonna not notice the difference between a single family house and a duplex house. Okay. Matt. I have one, I'm sorry, Commissioner Bryan. I just wanna quickly add one piece that I think everybody's probably aware of this but I wanna make sure I get it on the record. There is a law in North Carolina that prohibits us from regulating the appearance of one and two family units. I understand. And I think you're aware of it but I do wanna make sure that's on the record. So again, any design characteristics and maybe objectionable for a duplex would be just as likely, if not more likely to be found in a single family unit. So just to emphasize the point Mr. Stock's making. Thank you. Second question. As I currently understand that the only, I guess adopted policy statement or a policy wish maybe is for affordable housing, 15% in the areas around the design areas around the transit stations. What in these proposals contributes to getting affordable housing there, if anything? Well, this is a focus around primarily the urban tier which there are some, the transit stations have their own designation which are the compact neighborhood tiers. So this is not likely to help in the compact neighborhood tier is that what I'm hearing you say? Well, we recognize that there's a variety of different development opportunities and options that we're gonna have to provide. We briefly discussed in one of the slides that Durham's gonna have to take a look at there's some building out which we currently see in your typical suburban subdivision development towards the edges and that's becoming even that is starting to become more and more expensive as land is just generally becoming more and more expensive and the challenges there's no easy land out there to develop now. There's lots of environmental challenges particularly with that land or building up which is taking a look at the usually generally around downtown or your compact neighborhood tiers and then taking a look at what aspects of building in can we accomplish. Okay, I do have one final question. There's still, believe it or not, land available in South Durham. If you're not careful or what is likely to happen based on some of the developers I've talked with is that if they can get it from the owners they wanna put townhouses there. Townhouses seem to be the thing of the moment right now. Is there any way that these changes can maybe help people do something different, make things in this land that's available more affordable? I mean, that's a tough question to answer. I mean, land is just becoming more and more expensive just quite frankly and townhouses are popular because A, you can provide more units based upon the land that you're paying for and it's built under the residential code. So single family townhouses and duplexes are all under the same code. Once you get to quads and even small apartments you're under commercial code and you're hitting a host of additional regulatory requirements. Thank you, Commissioner Bryan, Commissioner Miller. So one of the things that I would like to understand is the, excuse me, Patrick, you might wanna step around. So I can see you. So if I understand the current plan for applicability of this it's going to be everything in the urban tier except for RS 20. And the biggest RS 20 district I know of in the urban tiers and forest hills can you explain why we're exempting that? Well, there was no intent to exempt that neighborhood. What the intent was was to have it apply to the urban tier and to the residential urban RU zoning districts some of which are in the suburban tier the vast majority are in the urban tier. Commissioner Bryan asked a very good question about policy. But we also have a lot of RS zones in the urban tier and we're applying to those, it to those. So RS 8, RS 10, we have that in the urban tier and we are applying these to that, but not to RS 20 where we actually have the most unused land. I mean, if I understand this correctly what would be the maximum ADU in RS 20? If this was passed? Well, the ADU provisions would apply to any residential area. Okay, so it's not, it's all right. That's not limited. Yes, as I tried to emphasize in my comments we wanted to make sure that these proposals were in context and incremental. And RS 20 is a much lower density zoning district and we were concerned that full application of all of these provisions we did allude to the fact that the ADU standards and several others would apply in RS 20 but to apply all these standards would be potentially out of context. Reasonable people who can disagree, want any comments, you wanna give us on that or what we wanted to. No, I just wanted to know what the rationale was. I'm not, I'm not arguing for sure. So I also wanna understand the RS, I mean, excuse me, strike that the ADU location proposal. One of my biggest concerns based on the West Durham experience is the in a neighborhood where the lots are 50 by 150 or 50 by 100 or smaller somebody builds a gigantic ADU in the backyard. Well, a gigantic, let's say an 800 foot ADU in the backyard of the house next door. It can dominate the backyard privacy if the house houses on either side. And it looks like you're trying to address that by requiring ADUs to be up closer to the principal residence but I'm not sure I understood what you were saying on, well, I think you're calling the poster for that. Can you explain it for me so I understand it better? The biggest change with the location requirements right now they're required to be to the rear of the primary structure. What we're proposing is to allow some possibility to decide the primary structure and literally only work. To the side, do you mean around literally to the side? To the side of it. So many of you have seen garage detached garages that are to a side of a house but aren't attached to it. So we're looking to make that allowance apply to ADUs to the generally what we're proposing is to the either the back half or the back quarter of the house. So it's not right up front with the primary structure. And I said that part I didn't understand what is the back half or the back? So if you walk down the side of the house, you have the front half and the back half. Okay, I'm with you. And we're struggling when we bring the text with you, we're struggling with the appropriate wording for that too. So, but that's generally the idea. It's my own preference with ADUs is that they be up closer to the structure to which they accessorize and so that backyards are freer because I believe that's what neighbors object to. I also in the same thing saw that we're requiring a tree but I don't understand I'm troubled by the tree requirement because it appears to be window dressing to me. If we wind up with a situation where on a small lot you can have a duplex and an ADU and you're also going to require a tree in the backyard, you're not gonna have much space for it. I mean, I'm not sure I understand it. What if the tree dies? You're gonna go and incite somebody for a zoning violation? Well, I mean, that is, yeah. So the tree requirement is actually stolen from the old West Durham. And I'm not making fun of the concern. I'm concerned about the... What the tree requirement does. How we can make it work. So what the tree requirement does, it does a couple of things. A, it helps address a potential loss of tree canopy, which if you're going to allow for more development anywhere, you're gonna be losing trees, whether it's even a suburban tier, rural tier, wherever. You'll be seeing actually a compendium, well not a compendium, but a separate zoning text amendment which brings more tree coverage requirements and such next month also. But what it also does is start to minimize or prevent additional impervious surface. So if you have to have a tree or show either retain a tree or plant one, you start to least mandate a little bit less impervious surface. That's coupled also with the driveway requirements of minimizing the width of the driveway. So there's a couple. The driveway requirement was empirical and made sense. I was having trouble understanding how the tree thing was going to work. The tree was just actually a simple, but we thought effective way of starting to get more, introduce more tree canopy in a very easy way of doing it. That's very understandable to anybody who's looking to just build a house or an ADU or something that you just plant tree. But this tree is going to be, we talk about tree canopy. So this tree's got to be a canopy tree. The tree canopy we're talking about, it doesn't have to be actually. We're going to say either an understory or canopy tree because we also realize that there are different planting and planting area requirements and viabilities for health. Also understand that we have current street tree requirements that are required on private property. So those are also currently reviewed and enforced. So really it's just adding an additional checkbox to see if there's a tree there whether it was maintained or planted. And then the infill standard thing, if I understand it correctly, today, the infill standards based upon the concept of a block face which was problematic from the day it was written into the code. We blocks in Watt-Sillendale, but what's a block in a Hope Valley street? I could not tell you. And it basically says, if I understand it correctly, an infill house in there has to be related in some way to the average heights or somehow of the houses on the block face. But if you have more than 25 foot separation from the nearest dwellings, you can add 14 feet to that average figure as long as you don't max out the 35 feet requirement. Is that right? That's the current? No, it kind of works a little bit differently and that's why we're actually changing it. You're held to either the zoning height or whichever is lesser, the zoning height or at most 14 feet. But that 25 foot you're talking about is actually exempting that 14 foot cap per se. So we're clarifying how and what's the change that you measure you compare the height to? But there's a 35 foot requirement, no matter what. There's a 35 foot requirement from the base zoning district and it recognizes that, but it also requires you what would be the lesser. So if the lesser is what is... So if it's a neighborhood of one story houses and under the current rules, you can't build anything substantially larger than a one story house unless you've got 25 foot separations. Is that not right? No, you can add it. It allows for an additional story to 14 feet gives you an additional story. Well, it's really not a standard at all then with a 35 foot cap because the average single family resident unless it's got a flat roof is about 18 to 22 feet. So you're saving a foot or two. It seems to me this is just wasted paper in the code. Well, we can take a look at it. That's definitely a comment that we'd like to hear from. Because I don't think our infill standards are actually standards. If Jeff Monzine could build what he was building in a lost storm that caused so much alarm there under the existing infill standards so that we had to create an NPO for them. It seems to me that our infill standards were not serving us very well. That's my observation you'll have to respond. I wasn't going to. But I would like to have, because part of your presentation, Patrick, is that we want to protect the character of neighborhoods and we're going to do that with these infill standards but I don't think we have any infill standards. We have an infill standard that affects height that we're actually talking about making relaxing. But it's only a couple of feet off what the maximum is anyway. It's more of an irritant than a character's protection. And I'm all for protecting character. I'm against having zoning regulations whose purpose or whose effect is merely to irritate people. Well, if I might respond in this way, I appreciate your point. We do take the need to protect context very seriously. We're also concerned candidly, as I think you've heard from us previously, that an individual neighborhood protection overlay is a great tool for an individual neighborhood to preserve its character. But cumulatively and collectively over time, as you've seen in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, who have dozens and more than a dozen in Raleigh, it becomes a significant constraint on housing supply and housing affordability. So we think it's really important if you could help us, we're all ears truly to craft standards that are substantial, meaningful infill standards that are legally applicable and defensible. That could be applied across the urban tier that allowed greater diversity of housing choice but protected character. We struggle daily to try to find that. And it sounds like you feel like we've missed the mark. I would love any input you have on the type of standards that we could apply more broadly that would get kind of that deeper level of community buy-in. This is something that all the communities that are looking at this issue are really, really struggling with North Carolina has made it much, much harder by not allowing us to regulate design or architecture. I'm a believer that if we could regulate design and architecture, we could get 90% of the way there, but we can't. I realize that. And I guess my final point, I have one final point is I am concerned that by doing all of this by right, and further excludes ordinary people whose interest in the whole planning process is the homes that they buy or where they live from having an active ongoing role and say in creating the regulatory environment of their neighborhood. I mean, zoning is the police power. It's valid only if it protects the public welfare, but if we make it so that the public can't participate effectively in the process, and we've been very good at this. I mean, we've pretty much reduced the public into coming to these hearings and saying, no, they have no other role. And we're not even gonna let them do that anymore. I object to that. I think that for at least some of these things, especially the duplex proposal, not having a use permit, which then would allow the Board of Adjustment to impose conditions which would be enforceable under our existing statute for compatibility. In my opinion, a lot of my concern about this whole thing would go away as long as ordinary people would have a say in the way their neighborhoods change. Now, the great thing about a use permit isn't come up and say, I don't like this. And then the Board of Adjustments says, nine out of the 11 people who spoke said they didn't like it. That's not a reason for turning it down. But I think we can have standards, especially as it relates to compatibility and parking and some of the other issues that we currently address in our across-the-board standards for use permits that would allow some case-by-case consideration and also allow ordinary people to continue to have a hand on the steering wheel of creating our planning and zoning environment, which they don't have right now. That's my biggest concern about this. Great, thank you, Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Williams and Commissioner Baker and then Commissioner Alturk. I forgot. You forgot? We'll come back to you then if you remember Commissioner Baker. I think this is really good work, really important work. I definitely support the spirit of the work that you're doing. The contextual compatibility standards, I think, are something that might need to be dug into a little bit more, it sounds like. I do think it's possible to increase density in filled situations without ruining the character of neighborhoods. I think that we could actually enhance the character of neighborhoods. A lot of our favorite neighborhoods in the city are neighborhoods that have a variety of different housing types. This tend to be historic. I do think that something like this will probably go through, will be passed, will become local law. I do think that there will be developers out there that will take advantage of it in order to build low quality development. I think that anticipating to the greatest extent possible, making sure that we're looking ahead as much as we can, is going to be really important. I also think that there's some of the things that Commissioner Miller spoke about. Maybe thinking about how can we maybe not make everything by right, but we can say, okay, you want to go up to two or three or four units. Here's what you need to provide. And I don't know, I don't know quite enough about the case, about the state legislation in terms of what is actually allowed with design standards. If there's some way of incentivizing higher density through design standards. Of course, it's an incentive for neighborhoods to allow maybe something that's higher density, four or five units or more with design standards, if that is possible. So that might be a way of encouraging people to support this. So it seems like all of this is geared toward infill development. I wonder if as part of this, there's a look at any green fall development, because of course, we're focusing a lot on infill areas. A lot of people are being pushed out of these infill areas and they're being pushed into automobile oriented areas and low income people living in automobile oriented areas is kind of a recipe for disaster without access to transit. And so I don't know if you can speak to anything that we're doing about neighborhood design standards or anything like that. Sure, for more of the suburban style development, we again are looking to change the cluster subdivision requirements, which we're seeing a lot more requests for and even the conservation subdivision requirements to allow more variety of housing types to be offered within those developments up, particularly duplexes throughout and then even with conservation subdivisions, townhouses too. We currently also have a thoroughfare density bonus that allows for townhouses. This is, I believe this might be more urban tier if I'm remembering correctly, but I could be wrong. But we are adding, this is the one place where we are introducing a multiplex option. Multiplexes are currently a housing option within the UDO. Those are just kind of small apartment buildings, three and four unit apartment buildings and proposing them along major thoroughfares and boulevards. So we're starting to look into that. I think when we go through the comprehensive plan process and take a look at how Durham sees itself growing in the next couple of decades, we're gonna have a better handle on where to introduce these even more different more intense housing types, the three, four, five unit housing types, the garden style apartments. And then also introduce a associated design standards for those too. Because we do anticipate there would be some changes to the ordinance once the comprehensive plan is adopted. If I just quickly add on to what Michael said, I think Commissioner Baker and Commissioner Miller, as I promised Commissioner Miller, we will absolutely take a very hard look at the infill standards and making sure that we go as far as we can under law to ensure that they are protective of existing character. But in terms of, and we will continue to evaluate and investigate this, we've done a lot of work already looking at pure cities and working with our attorney's office to test the realm of what's possible and legal. It is legally possible to make a lot of what you heard from Michael approval through a use permit or some other supplemental process. I think we have concluded that because of the limitations on design in state law on single family and two family units, there's no meaningful or substantial difference between one and two family units other than we're allowing someone to create 100% more housing opportunities if they are able to build a duplex. And that's why we haven't felt it was warranted or needed to have a supplemental use permit process. But we will take a look at that. I just want you to know exactly where we're at at this moment and appreciate your feedback and we'll investigate that further. Great, thank you. Commissioner Aturk. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for your presentations. I had a question about the survey. Do you have a sense of how representative it is of the population as a whole in terms of race, income and geography? Of which the one that was done over the summer or one over the summer, we did not ask those questions, although for my recollection, and again, it's recollection, so don't hold me to it. It's usually pretty poor. That the response is that it was able to kind of track where people resided or where they were accessing it from. And it was actually somewhat from my recollection, it was rather representative around different areas of Durham and outside of Durham too. It even hit some places in like Europe too, oddly. So, and I think even in Antarctica was one place for whatever reason, but it was one. That's in the rural tier. Yes, that's in the rural tier. Yes, yes, I believe those are functional areas. I was saying it in jest, so, but it was pretty representative throughout. Okay, I just want to make sure whenever we're... Geography-wise, anyway. 70% of people are okay with duplexes that it's not because they all live in... Right. ...in New Park or, you know. Okay, thanks for that. I guess I have a couple of small questions. One on the ADUs, I mean, and I, this was one of the things about the NPO that I did not like, which is the 800 square foot maximum. So I get that if you're trying to make it, in some ways, more flexible by taking away the 30%, but that could, that's also making it more restrictive. If, I mean, if one of the goals is to make ADUs more prominent, not just in the urban core, but throughout, then I'm not sure what's the point of capping at 800 rather than maybe increasing the percentage to say 50% or 60% and say, or maybe doing it to where if it's in the urban tier, you know, it's a maximum of 800. If it's in the suburban, you can go up to, you know, 1,000 or 1,200 or something. Yeah. We certainly can investigate that. Commissioner Alturk, I think that what was critical, we believed, was having a set maximum so that the industry architects and designers and small builders could have a standardized plan that they could use. We're in fact working with American Institute of Architects, local chapter on coming up with a possible standard design for the 800 square feet unit. But in terms of, one of our primary concerns to the comments that Commissioner Miller and Baker made was ensuring that accessory dwelling units remain accessory. And I think we did do some investigation and research to show that if you've got a neighborhood, primarily single family houses, once you get over 800 square feet, there is some risk of it looking and feeling like a second primary structure. So we will continue to investigate that idea for areas, suburban and rural areas where there's much larger lots. I think we could do that. But for the urban tier, we feel pretty strongly that 800 is, there's very few housing units that are, there are some, but that are below 800 square feet in the urban tier. Thanks. The other question is about duplexes. So now I can't remember exactly, but from what, so the focus is on duplexes or changing some of the regulations within the urban tier. But again, it's, is there a reason not to extend that to the suburban tier? I mean, I get that some people, a lot of people maybe in those neighborhoods are gonna be against duplexes, but why not, especially in the zoning designations that are a little bit more dense, like the RS 10 and eight is why not allow duplexes there? I think we could look at that as well. I think there are two primary reasons. One is something I tried to allude to in my presentation, which is we wanted to really focus these changes where the highest demand was. And there's a tremendous differential, multiples four, five, six times in terms of a per square foot in the urban tier, a lot of these urban tier neighborhoods than suburban. So we felt like the utilization of this availability would be a lot higher. The second is that in the suburban tier, there's a much higher incidence of functional homeowners associations with restrictive covenants that come with the would likely preclude or even if our zoning allowed it would prohibit or preclude the use of that many of these covenants and nationwide they are something that restricts housing supply and reduces affordability, prohibit anything other than single family units. Thank you. So I guess maybe the bigger question that I have is that, I mean you mentioned how you're not focusing on multiplexes in this at this stage. And Pat, you also said, I mean to quote you, you said this is a gentle approach. And I guess the question is, because at the beginning of the presentation, it almost seems like doomsday, like we've got so many people invading Durham and we don't have enough right supply. And so why take the gentle approach and why not focus on multiplexes? Why not? Or what's, I mean, can you talk through the reasoning? Maybe I missed that or? Sure, I think there's two primary reasons. One is practical and one is philosophical, if you will. Philosophical one is, we think it's really important to have a greater level even though we I think we've done a really good job over the last seven or eight months, greater level of community engagement, talking to communities and listening to communities about this problem. Like we presented it to you tonight, so that we can get a higher level of buy-in from the broader community on those bigger scale solutions, the guard departments and the multiplexes and more locations. So we think that the comprehensive plan which we're gonna be kicking off very soon is a tremendous vehicle to do that. We're gonna have a consulting group that's gonna help us with communication and outreach and we'll really be able to essentially tell this story more effectively perhaps than I have tonight in more places in the community before we propose those types of changes which can be perceived and actually disruptive to communities. So that's one reason. The second reason is a practical reason. As you all are well aware, zoning is only one piece of the puzzle, right? The other pieces are things like stormwater requirements, roadway standards that require certain width of roads for trash trucks and for buyer engine turnarounds and utility standards that we believe if we go to three plexes, four plexes or garden apartments, we have to look at these other standards. We have to make sure that we have fire and solid waste equipment that can go into smaller roads and it can service these higher intensity areas. We have to look at how we manage our stormwater standards that currently have to be on each individual site. So we felt like if we did push for more intense range of uses and more locations, we wouldn't be able to implement them because of these other regulations impeding that. Does it make sense? That was very helpful. Thank you. Great, thank you. Well, I know the hour is late. I did want to just say a couple of quick things as we wrap up, but Pat, I'm glad you raised the stormwater standards. I do think, I don't know the question, it's just, I do think that's something we have to keep an eye on along with the tree canopy issue which you're working to address in this proposal. I've been impressed with the balance of trying to get a lot of public feedback but also moving this through relatively quickly. So I think you found that right balance. I do think something we really want to make sure we focus on is the post, if this does indeed move forward and get approved, I think we have to really work hard to make sure we are continuing to engage and educate the public or else we'll see what we saw with Pinecrest where people were showing up and saying, when did this happen that our neighborhood changed the tier we were in? And it went through obviously a very intensive public process, but it's easy to get through the process and say great, we made it but we need to really make sure we're educating the community to understand the changes that are coming here. I think we're striking the right balance in my opinion in terms of not moving too quickly but I think we, being the planning commission, the elected bodies and certainly the planning department, you're gonna hear a lot if people start seeing the changes in their neighborhoods and they didn't understand, they just missed that there was this engagement process. So I'm hoping there'll be a post education process as well that the staff could spend some time thinking about. With that said, I don't see any additional comments. So I do wanna, commissioner, okay, let's keep them quick because the hour is late. I promise mine will be very short. Okay, commissioner Williams? I just, I thought the presentation was awesome like to begin with and as we address issues in terms of aging in place and these accessory dwelling units and we're calling them granny flats but the one thing that makes it difficult for the average aging adult is navigating stairs. So being able to create an environment where we're not only addressing the growth of Durham but the retention of Durham citizens. So if we're not asking what your intended length of stay is in Durham or how long you've been here, the majority of the opposition that we receive are from those that are over 50 and over 40 and I'm approaching 40 myself and I know a lot of my peers that are lifers in Durham as I am. The question comes to me often is, it's affordable housing but affordable for who? I've been in Durham my whole life. So what are they doing for us? Because we've survived housing crisis. We've survived economic crisis. We haven't left and we're gonna be here. So I think that getting that input will be invaluable to the planning commission because it will help into the planning staff because it will help people that are vested here and they wanna remain here and then we don't have these demonstrative changes because of the growth because we gotta find that balance of how does growth and retention cohabitate in the same area and I think that that pretty much sums up at least what I've seen throughout my tenure here. Great, thank you. That's as brief as I could keep it. That was brief, Commissioner Gibbs. And this will be very brief. You mentioned storm water. Every time I hear water and the increased development and more and more people, I think of water supply and I am talking about absolutely enough water. We're taxing our systems now and with places like Chatham Park, I don't know where in the dickens they're gonna get all the water for that but at any rate, I said I was gonna be quick and that is if you'd pass along to the water people, storm water and water supply is a big issue and has been with me for years. Thank you. Mr. Young, Mr. Stock, thank you both very much. Thank you. This February. This is it for the meeting, two quick final things. So number one, I did just wanna let you know that between now and Tuesday, since it's a new year and it's been a long time since we've done this, we are going to work to rework our seating assignment. So the seating assignment is the chair has the ability at any time to change the seating assignments. We haven't done it in years. And so basically as each of you have come in, you've just taken the place of the person who you've replaced and the seat width that they've had. So we're gonna work to rework the seating. And so when you come here on Tuesday, we'll get this to you in advance. Don't just come and sit in your normal seat. Just take a moment and we'll figure out the new seating arrangement for the new year. The second and final thing I just see, anything else from staff for this evening? No, thank you. I was just gonna think unless you wanna sit in someone else's seat and be them for the night, you could do that. We don't advise that you do that though. And if you have a seating preference, the bartering is open. So all right, with that we're adjourned. Thank you all very much and we'll see you on Tuesday. My preference is where I'm sitting. When do you want our comments?